Meaning-Making Ocean in an Indonesian Fisher Village

Master’s thesis in Social and Cultural Anthropology Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology Free University of Berlin

“Dry paddle – empty pot” Meaning-making ocean in an Indonesian fisher village

Charlotte Schenk

Date of submission: 25/05/2020

Contents

List of figures ...... i Introduction ...... 1 The ocean as a socio-cultural sphere ...... 1 The Sama village of ‘sweet water’ ...... 8 Researching multidimensionally ...... 11 Chapter outline ...... 15 Chapter I: Entangling occupations ...... 17 Mariculture and trade ...... 17 Underwater searching ...... 20 Overwater catching ...... 24 Cooking ...... 27 Collecting water ...... 28 Washing ...... 30 Sea bathing ...... 31 Chapter II: (Un)settling materialities ...... 33 Concrete houses and ‘losing culture’ ...... 33 ‘Running (off) to the reef’ ...... 39 Money and ‘headache’ ...... 41 Chapter III: Reassuring mutuality ...... 46 ‘Scared alone’ ...... 46 ‘Together con(si)stently’ ...... 50 ‘Here it is not together’ ...... 51 ‘We think (about it) together’ ...... 52 Chapter IV: Meaning-making ocean ...... 56 ‘Hopefully, …’ or patience, luck and support as guiding motive ...... 56 ‘Living over the sea’ and what it implies ...... 63 ‘Orang Sama bersama-sama’ ...... 67 Conclusion ...... 71 Photo gallery ...... 76 Glossary ...... 91 Bibliography ...... 95 List of figures

Figure 1: Hill view of the village ...... 76 Figure 2: Village road (vv) ...... 76 Figure 3: Common buildings inside the island ...... 77 Figure 4: Family houses at the edge of the island ...... 77 Figure 5: Children playing inside the village ...... 77 Figure 6: Construction connecting island and sea ...... 77 Figure 7: Rain falling through stilt house into sea ...... 77 Figure 8: People travelling in the distance ...... 77 Figure 9: Ana and Nur's concrete house ...... 78 Figure 10: Ana and Nur's terrace in front of their island-based house ...... 78 Figure 11: Erma's parent's terrace, seaward-part of stilt house (vv) ...... 78 Figure 12: Erma and Saldrin's wooden stilt house ...... 78 Figure 13: Saldrin and Erma getting ready to travel to W. to sell lobster, Elo and Devi watching from house .... 79 Figure 14: On a trade trip with Nur, live-fish inside the body of the boat (underneath planks) ...... 79 Figure 15: Nur's fish tank in front of his house ...... 79 Figure 16: Nur's fish tank, underwater ...... 79 Figure 17: Nur applying iodine into wounds ...... 79 Figure 18: Live-fish trade-platform ...... 79 Figure 19: Pearl farm, underwater ...... 80 Figure 20: Men collecting shell-farming racks ...... 80 Figure 21: Women cleaning shell-farming racks ...... 80 Figure 22: Searching kima with Ana ...... 80 Figure 23: Preparing kima with Ana in front of her house; basket with rope to collect seawater ...... 80 Figure 24: Cooked kima ...... 80 Figure 25: Saldrin pulling his boat, searching for octopus ...... 81 Figure 26: Saldrin teasing octopus out of its hiding place ...... 81 Figure 27: Octopus fighting back with ink ...... 81 Figure 28: Saldrin bringing octopus to surface ...... 81 Figure 29: Saldrin killing octopus for transport ...... 81 Figure 30: Clouds and waves, time to return to Boe Manes ...... 81 Figure 31: Underwater searching by night, catch stored on boat, which Saldrin pulls behind him ...... 82 Figure 32: Saldrin smiling on the way to the reef ...... 82 Figure 33: Erma’s mother fishing with nylon (pv) ...... 82 Figure 34: Nur preparing the fishing line for night fishing ...... 82 Figure 35: Erma grilling fish on the boat by night ...... 82 Figure 36: Ikan garam drying in the sun (pv) ...... 82 Figure 37: Saldrin’s father putting net into water ...... 83 Figure 38: Net forming a circle ...... 83 Figure 39: Making noise to tease fish within the circling net into the net on their attempt to escape ...... 83 Figure 40: Erma’s cousin and her father pulling-in net ...... 83 Figure 41: Brother of Saldrin reorganizing net underwater while the others pull It up ...... 83 Figure 42: Woman returning from net fishing (pv) ...... 83 Figure 43: Boiling water (pv) ...... 84 Figure 44: Woman making chilli paste ...... 84 Figure 45: Cooking special part of kima ...... 84 Figure 46: Cumi-cumi cooked in its ink ...... 84 Figure 47: Devi cooking rice (pv) ...... 84 Figure 48: Good catch (pv) ...... 84 Figure 49: Snack ...... 84 Figure 50: Teripang drying in the sun (pv) ...... 84 Figure 51: Women cooking rice for big celebration ...... 85

Figure 52: Women preparing vegetables for big celebration ...... 85 Figure 53: Woman travelling to neighbouring island to collect water ...... 85 Figure 54: Children playing and collecting rain water ...... 85 Figure 55: Buckets placed halfway underneath the roof to collect rain water efficiently ...... 85 Figure 56: Hill on neighbouring island that needs to be walked up to collect water when it has not rained ...... 85 Figure 57: Tempat air beside Erma and Saldrin's house (pv) ...... 86 Figure 58: Woman collecting water ...... 86 Figure 59: Erma organizing water, which is stored separately for drinking, cooking and cleaning (pv) ...... 86 Figure 60: Women socializing at the tempat air (pv) ...... 86 Figure 61: Su washing laundry at the tempat air in rain; man returning to his home after collecting water ...... 86 Figure 62: Toilet over the sea ...... 86 Figure 63: Girl playing in front of the house on a boat (pv) ...... 87 Figure 64: Children playing in front of the house in the water (pv) ...... 87 Figure 65: Children playing in front of the house underwater (pv) ...... 87 Figure 66: Boy playing underneath the house, underwater (pv) ...... 87 Figure 67: Children and I on a little boat trip ...... 87 Figure 68: Children and I returning from little boat trip ...... 87 Figure 69: Bedroom in Nur and Ana’s house ...... 88 Figure 70: Livingroom in Saldrin and Erma’s house ...... 88 Figure 71: One of about 20 new concrete houses ...... 88 Figure 72: Chopped off hill, rocks used for houses ...... 88 Figure 73: Fi’s wooden stilt house under construction (pv) ...... 88 Figure 74: Structure of an abandoned stilt house on a reef ...... 88 Figure 75: Saldrin's (only and small) boat ...... 88 Figure 76: Big traditional boat of a tourist; Sama used to own a big and a small boat for different tasks ...... 88 Figure 77: Devi and Erma’s mother waiting (pv) ...... 89 Figure 78: Saldrin and Erma's mother and brother waiting (pv) ...... 89 Figure 79: Teaching English, children working together ...... 89 Figure 80: Playing volleyball in the late afternoon ...... 89 Figure 81: Children playing memory ...... 89 Figure 82: Award ceremony ...... 89 Figure 83: Bed of Erma, Saldrin and their children, pillows stacked together (pv) ...... 89 Figure 84: Erma and some of her family (pv) ...... 89 Figure 85: Fish Nur and his brothers caught after their mother’s funeral ...... 90 Figure 86: Preparing fish for gunting rambut celebration (a baby’s first head shave/aqiqa) ...... 90 Figure 87: Erma's youngest sister during fishing with her parents (pv) ...... 90

Introduction

I conducted my research in a Sama village near Sulawesi for three months from February to May 2019. Sama is the emic term for an ethnic group and their language who, by outsiders and in the literature, are mainly referred to as Bajau, Bajau Laut, Bajau Dilaut, Sama-Bajau or Bajo, depending on the region and the author. They are believed to have originated from the Sulu Archipelago in the Philippines and today live in Eastern Borneo, Sulawesi and Eastern Indonesia. Together with the Moken/Moklen of the Mergui Archipelago in Myanmar and Southwestern Thailand and the Orang Laut/Orang Suku Laut (‘sea people’ or ‘sea tribe people’) of the Riau-Lingga Archipelago, Batam, Eastern Sumatra and Southern Johore they are one out of three main groups of people that have mainly been described as ‘sea nomads’ or ‘boat dwelling’ and nowadays often live in stilt houses on reefs or in coastal regions (see Lenhart 1995: 245ff, 2008: 311; Sather 1997: 320ff, Chou 2010: 3). Looking at those three groups, the Moken/Moklen are linguistically, economically and politically more distinguishable compared to the other two groups (see Sather 1997: 321ff). Following the literature on Orang Laut/Orang Suku Laut and Bajau Laut/Bajo/Sama there are many similarities concerning their economic and social organisation, their building of boats and houses and their language. Although, in the literature, the tendency is to assume that they are to be distinct historically, some doubt remains (Sather 1997: 320ff). In this thesis, I am not aiming at mapping ‘Sama ethnicity’, however, I consider the biographies and history of the people I lived with to be important, as well as the fact that they, with pride and determination, refer to themselves as Sama. I, therefore, go along with the self- imposed term and take studies on Sama/Bajau as well as on Orang (Suku) Laut into account to make comparisons and draw connections.

The ocean as a socio-cultural sphere

Although maritime societies have long been subject to anthropology, taking Bronislaw Malinowski’s “Argonauts of the Western Pacific” (1922) or Margaret Mead’s “Coming of Age in Samoa” (1923) as famous examples, maritime anthropology as a sub-discipline only evolved in the 1970s.

In the 1975’s collected edition “Maritime Adaptation in the Pacific” (Casteel & Quimby, eds.) the different contributors look at the adaptation of maritime societies to their physical environments with ethnographic, historical and archaeological approaches. The ocean1 here is conceived as a mere physical or ecological space that contains fish as a resource. Although the contributions address technological, social and cultural change and, to a lesser degree, risk, the experiences that people make and the meanings the ocean has for them are not addressed. This goes along with the reasoning of the editors who argue in their introduction that “just as urban anthropology is a contemporary subject so is maritime anthropology” because of “the rapidly increasing interest and concern on the part of many different nations and scholarly specialties in the resources and potential uses of the world’s oceans and seas” (Casteel & Quimby 1975: 4). Similarly, the volume “Those who Live From the Sea. A Study in Maritime Anthropology” (Smith, ed. 1977) looks, as the title suggests, at the ocean as an economic zone, which people take from. While in the aforementioned collection ecologic regions, species and equipment are at the centre of discussion in the context of adaptation and resource management, this collection sets focus on technological and consequent economic and social changes. In comparison, the contributions in this volume are closer to local experiences than those in the other one. Yet, intimate insights into people’s lives and their experiences with and evaluations of these changes are hardly touched upon and the ocean, here too, remains nothing more than a “new frontier” (Smith 1977: 2):

The sea is a source of food for the protein-hungry; it is a source of materials necessary to grow land-based foods, especially as land-derived, finite minerals for fertilizers become increasingly necessary and increasingly scarce; it contains a wealthy of untapped resources, such as metals and oils, which are not only needed to maintain the entire life style which man has evolved, but which also may mark the difference between a nation’s political and economic continuance or collapse; and it is an international highway for the transmission of trade goods and tactical forces; as well as a territorial extension of specific nations. (ibid.)

It should be taken into account that both volumes being written in the 1970s evolved in the context of the increasing growth in the world’s population and the consequent pressing food shortages as well as in the context of the increasingly common usage of new technologies and

1 I differentiate between the terms ‘ocean’ and ‘sea’ as follows: An ocean is „[a] very large expanse of sea, in particular each of the main areas into which the sea is divided geographically” (Oxford University Press 2019b) while the sea is (1) “[t]he expanse of salt water that covers most of the earth's surface and surrounds its land masses” but also (2) “a roughly definable area of the sea” (Oxford University Press 2019d). I, therefore, use the term ‘sea’ for the rather direct local experiences and the term ‘ocean’ for the succeeding meaning-oriented (beyond-place) interpretations.

2 the need for materials due to the prior industrial revolution and the proceeding globalisation. It is, therefore, not surprising that the ocean is mainly seen as a biomass, a resource-container, and a territory of national and international political and economic interest and that local populations are looked at through the lens of change; often in the form of transformations from subsistent to capitalistic modes of production. Nevertheless, the emic perspective anthropological work should be characterized by remains widely missing and the perspective is predominantly land-based. Another focus in maritime anthropology, which has become especially prominent in the last two decades, is that on environmental degradation and maritime conservation taking multiple epistemological approaches and ontologies into consideration. In the context of marine conservation, Lauer & Aswani who researched among fishers in the Solomon Islands argue:

More research is needed to develop approaches and methods that can empirically record aspects of knowing and understanding that are commonly ignored in indigenous knowledge studies. The study of situated practices demands that we devise a variety of methodologies and multiple theoretical frameworks to more fully explore, comprehend, and appreciate indigenous people’s lives and perspectives in a rapidly changing world. (2009: 327)

With the increase in international marine protection programmes as a starting point, Clifton & Majors (2012) argue similarly that the respective socio-cultural contests, the conceptions of nature and environment and the relative power of the parties involved need to be taken into account. Here, however, it becomes quite clear that such an approach can easily lead to portraying groups of people as inferior or in need of help as well as displaying maritime regions as particularly ecological and vulnerable ones:

Rather than attempting to create undue optimism through searching for common ground between resource users and conservationists, we have focused upon outlining elements of an alternate worldview relative to the marine environment from an insider or emic perspective. Given the ongoing impetus to expand the spatial extent of marine protected areas worldwide, we feel that this approach is necessary if conservationists are to fulfil oft-stated commitments to involve local communities in their activities. Combined with a truly adaptive ethos, this could facilitate the identification of conservation measures that are more reflective and accommodating of the local sociocultural context, thereby hopefully engendering less opposition and more involvement from user groups. Conversely, this would also enable the recognition of situations where no such common ground can be found, which would in turn assist the effective use of conservation funds. Faced with the ongoing environmental, economic, and social costs of marine resource degradation, the brunt of which is borne by local maritime communities worldwide, we consider that this is an important, if time-consuming, step to take if marine conservation policies are to have the opportunity of gaining genuine community support. (ibid: 723)

Such approaches (see also Rubow 2016), despite their intentions to take socio-cultural contexts and multiple understandings of ‘the environment’ into account, still construct a picture in which the maritime sphere is mainly an ecological space – more than other spaces like, for example, urban ones – and which need to be protected – more than other regions in the world. These studies then intensify the very nature-culture-dichotomy they often aim at overcoming, in both, spatial and conceptual terms as they, though considering multiple ontologies, still focus on ‘the environment’ and ‘ecological spaces’. This does not only presuppose the existence of such spaces in general and defines where, and where not, they are to be found but also reduces people in these areas to ecological issues. While it seems to me that these studies nowadays, as climate change is receiving more and more global and cross-disciplinary attention, are considered legitimate to be conducted in village-settings in contrast to basic research, which apparently is often seen as out-dated, I believe that it is problematic, if research needs to start with a problem to be considered relevant and legitimate and if these problems are named and localized before the research even starts. Pauwelussen has a similar view:

My primary concern lies in the prominence of deductive research, in which reality is contained in pre-defined models and categorisation, coupled with a general emphasis on applied research rather than theory-building. Particularly in the last couple of decades maritime studies have been heavily influenced by the structuralfunctionalist underpinning of human ecology, commons studies and sustainable livelihood approaches. (2017: 149)

Another approach is that of perception. Since Ingold’s “The perception of the environment” (2000), the (sensual) experience of environments and the processual making-sense of them has been increasingly addressed. Here, the environment is used as a “relative term – relative, that is, to the being whose environment it is” and is approached as “the world as it exists and takes on meaning in relation to me, and in that sense, it came into existence and undergoes development with me and around me” and which is “never complete” but “continuously under construction” (2000: 20). The fact that Ingold choses to speak of his environment here, illustrates that he approaches perceiving as subject-centred. Taking the perception of the environment to water and seas (see, for example, Allen- Collinson & Hockey 2010; Ota 2006; Helmreich 2007, 2011; Merchant 2011; Hastrup 2011; Chou 2016), Strang argues: “water, as the most omnipresent and vitally important aspect of the environment, lends itself to an analysis of the relationship between human experience and the construction of meaning.” (2005: 92), focussing on universalizing qualities of water:

[A]lthough meaning is a human product, the environment is not a tabula rasa, but instead provides elements whose consistent characteristics are the basis for

meanings that flow cross-culturally, creating common undercurrents in culturally specific engagements and interpretations. (ibid. 97)

Although I strongly agree with Strang that comparisons of meaning in the context of water are highly interesting for anthropology because of the omnipresence of water, I believe that framing water as something that constructs cross-cultural meaning is problematic as this would assume that the qualities of water exist independently of perception and cultural interpretations and inherently suggest a hierarchy in which perceptions and meanings are products of water. However, taking temperature as an example, which in water physically affects the human body, cross-culturally, about twenty-five times faster than in air, a person freezing could be, culture- specifically, called a ‘sissy’ or a ‘warrior’ which can consequently evoke, for example, embarrassment for or enjoyment of being cold. This makes the perception of water temperature more complex than a simple distinction between a pleasurable or unpleasable thermal experience as done by Strang (2005: 100). Consequently, being cold can be, consciously or unconsciously, be ignored or emphasized. This is one of the many things I could observe when teaching diving2 to about two hundred different people; male and female, aged between 12 and 80 years, coming from various countries of all continents. As this example indicates, the seemingly common thermal characteristic of water does not necessarily reveal or generate cross-culturally common perceptions and meanings, but also differences. This leads to the chicken-egg-problem of whether, initially, it is (the perception of) water that shapes (cross- cultural) meaning or (culture-specific) meaning that shapes (the perception of) water – a problem inherent in human-environmental-relation approaches in general. Therefore, instead of getting lost in this question, comparative research considering water should allow for more open-ended and less subject-focussing approaches and look beyond water instead of at it. Another work on the perception of water is chapter five of Pauwelussen’s dissertation (2017) where she, by focussing on affect, describes cyanide fishing of Bajau in the Makassar Strait, among other more critical aspects that are also reflected by the fishermen themselves, as a sensual, pleasure-seeking activity and thereby manages to overcome an educational or apologetic approach to conservation research. Most of her thesis, however, she devotes to pointing out that:

[W]hat still remains understudied is the multiplicity of maritime worlds, how they take shape relationally and make a difference as mobile and affective ways of life. I contend that maritime scholarship has much to gain from more ethnographic exploration of the relational practices in which different maritime worlds come to

2 I worked as a scuba dive instructor near Lombok repetitively for about a year in total between 2014- 2018.

be and matter, and how they flow into one another in different sites and situations. Such exploration is also of societal relevance as it generates insight in the world- making practices that condition and interfere with conservation and development interventions in Indonesia. (ibid: 3ff)

This is similar to the perspective Epeli Hau’ofa suggests for the Pacific in his “Our Sea of Islands”:

There is a world of difference between viewing the Pacific as “islands in a far sea” and as “a sea of islands. The first emphasises dry surfaces in a vast ocean far from the centres of power. Focussing in this way stresses the smallness and remoteness of the islands. The second is a more holistic perspective in which things are seen in the totality of their relationships. (2008a[1993]: 31)

Theirs was a large world in which peoples and cultures moved and mingled, unhindered by boundaries of the kind erected much later by imperial powers. From one island to another they sailed to trade and to marry, thereby expanding social networks for greater flows of wealth. They travelled to visit relatives in a wide variety of natural and cultural surroundings, to quench their thirst for adventure, and even to fight and dominate. (ibid: 33)

Pauwelussen further criticizes the land-focus or land-see-dichotomy in maritime anthropology:

The majority of maritime ethnographies remains tied to the land, and covers coastal rather than sea-based practices. However, as my chapters show, even if most people live on the land most of their life, living at sea and in intimate correspondence with the sea is part of the human repertoire of dwelling. As such, it deserves attention as part of the diverse ways people organise their way of life. If not maritime anthropologists, who then will address this land bias and explore the sea as a lived- in space? (2017: 150ff)

While this critique is adequate looking at maritime anthropology in general, it only partially applies for the literature on Southeast Asian ‘sea nomads’. Pauwelussen’s “amphibiousness” (2016, 2017), which she means in a physical as well as social sense and which she uses as a methodical as well as an analytic tool to conceptualize the mobile world of the Bajau she researched among, which stretches over sea and land, is therefore interesting and convincing but it overlooks the writings that focus on the elevated status ‘sea nomads’ used to have in the Malay world precisely because of their ability to move in and between varied physical and social worlds and the marginalizations that followed, caused by Indonesian nation-building and international economic-growth programmes (Chou 1997, 2010, 2016; Lenhart 1997, 2001). Therefore, I agree with Pauwelussen when she says that “Human-marine worlds as mobile and affective webs of relations remain remarkably understudied” (2017: 154), however, I see it critical when she says:

Indeed, one may observe that the spatial bias (and land-bias) in thinking community is persistent. Perhaps so much so, that it has become ubiquitous, making even critical social scientists sometimes unreflective of why a sense of belonging together, or support, should be place-based. (2016: 5) as this may lead to the false idea that people living a mobile lifestyle do not care about specific places; a problem which Mazzullo & Ingold address in the context of nomadism as follows:

By locomotion we mean the mechanical propulsion of an object of some kind from point to point across a surface that is already laid out – as for example of a piece across a gaming board. To be able to move, in this sense, the object must be disconnected from the surface. Conversely, to be connected to the surface it must be fixed in place. When people who live by hunting and gathering or by herding have been called ‘nomadic’ by outsiders, their movement has generally been understood in this mechanical sense, with the corollary that only by setting down – by becoming ‘fixed’ to the land surface – can they establish any real connection with it. Nomadism, in this sense, necessarily implies a connection to the land that is tenuous or non-existent. … From the perspective of the people themselves however, it is precisely through their movement that they are entwined with the land. (2008: 36)

Similarly, Chou writes about Orang Laut:

Space, for the Orang Laut, is a continuous expanse defined by movement, perception and behaviour or activity. A space, or number of spaces together, can constitute a territory in which people are dispersed. Territories need not be demarcated by borders or boundaries. That is, there is complete openness along the so-called ‘borders’, if any are to be spoken about, with no restriction on the flow of individuals crossing them. (Chou 2010: 61)

To them, these spaces are inalienable gifts received from their ancestors. Their occupancy is a thing that cannot be separated, removed or alienated from them. It is indestructible and cannot be given away, exchanged or sold. (ibid: 59)

Yet, their connection to and ownership of places have not been recognized legally because of their mobility and the following assumption that they are not linked to places (ibid). I, therefore, approach places not as containers in which mobility is carried out but approach mobility as an activity that emplaces and makes meaning. A village, then, is not a self-contained entity but a gateway to insights of people’s lives within and beyond the village site. Accordingly, I chose a village as a starting point and base of my research, of which much took place beyond it, like for Pauwelussen:

The more I delved into the village, the more the ‘local’ place turned inside out; into a hub of lines extending far beyond the village. It appeared that Pantai Bakau was woven together by interlacing lines of social and material exchanges that were not reducible to the geographical-administrative boundaries of the village. (2016: 7)

And yet, the village as a base clearly matters too. It is the place people leave from and return to while others stay or visit and it can be a venue of conflict or support. Instead of contributing to discussions about place, however, I will conceptualize the ocean, or the seas, as socio-cultural spheres3: Rather than to think in terms of human- environmental-relations, which imply the idea of an environment on the one hand and humans that perceive it on the other and, by that, stress the idea of (two) relating but also opposing parties/actors that are in a dialectic relationship, I instead try to grasp maritime meaning-making and approach it as a consistent process, characterized by complex mutuality rather than relationality. By following many dimensions of everyday life, as I will explain in the methodological section of the introduction, I attempt to capture the multidimensionality of this sphere, which exceeds the spatial three-dimensionality of the (physical) sea/ocean, its sensual perception and ontological interpretation.

The Sama village of ‘sweet water’

When I left, I did not yet exactly know where, or whether at all, I would be able conduct my research. Following the advice of an Indonesian friend of mine, I travelled to the area he had recommended to me to ask my way through on-site. This went astoundingly well. After I had arrived in the region, it only took me a day to find a village and a host family as the people I asked happened to have Sama friends. They told me that I had a “very good” research interest as Sama would be an “especially interesting ethnic group” although they would also like to introduce me to theirs: Bugis. They brought me to the village the same day and, speaking Indonesian and English, they talked to their befriended family and the kepala desa (‘village head’/mayor) with me to make sure everything was mutually agreed upon and transparent. The village, Boe Manes4, is located on/at a tiny island (see figure 1)5. Most of the island itself are three rocky, barren hills that have partially been chopped off to use the rocks to build

3 Sphere: “An area of activity, interest, or expertise; a section of society or an aspect of life distinguished and unified by a particular characteristic”. (Oxford University Press 2019e) 4 Boe Manes is the emic name for the village. The official name, which is used outside the village, is a different one and, most likely, there will be several places with this emic name. Consequently, the name alone should not be sufficient to find the place. To be sure, I abbreviate the names of all the other places I mention and only name Sulawesi as the wider regional context. 5 I included a photo gallery in the appendix and link to specific photos throughout the text. This gives the reader the opportunity to get visual impressions in direct connection with the text as well as to look at the photos as an independent slide show with the photos speaking together, independently of the text. The photos were either taken by me or by people in Boe Manes, which I then marked as ‘pv’ if they are photos or ‘vv’ if it they are stilts that I took from videos. I have purposely chosen photos in which people

8 houses as well as to create flat space. Beside the hills passes the village road, which I estimate to be about 700 m long in total (see figure 2). The seaside of the road is packed with about 100 wooden and concrete houses while the hillside of the road is often used to hang up the laundry. Electricity is available from 6 pm to 11 pm and is used for illumination, to charge smartphones and tablets, to listen to music and the radio and, in some cases, to watch TV. There was no cell phone reception anywhere near the village, however, about two months into my stay a hardly working and expensive Wi-Fi hotspot was newly set up in a warung (small shop).6 Freshwater access in the houses and sewage pipes do not exist. The majority of the houses have direct access to the sea as they have at least two doors, one directing towards the island and one directing towards the sea. About half of them are stilt houses built on water – here one could also speak of direct access to the island from the sea instead of access to the sea from the island. Accordingly, to get around the village, the people use either the road or – depending on where they want to go and what they want to do – their boats. Some of the few buildings that do not have access to the sea are the school and a small hall which is used for political meetings, weddings and other gatherings. The mosque is also located on the inside of the island as well as a few family houses. These places, obviously, will be reached on foot. However, visiting family members or friends that do have access to the sea from their house, especially when transporting something or combining the visit with a trip, going by boat is often preferred. Visitors from the same village may, therefore, enter the houses, which are almost always open, from the island or the sea alike. Thus, the island and the village should not be understood as congruent and the difference does not simply lie in a physical place versus a place inhabited by humans and constituted with meanings. More importantly, I want to point out that the village stretches over island and sea through construction and movement. Therefore, I conceptualize the village in three socio-spatial entangled layers: (1) The physical centre of the island, which is mainly used for communal matters like education, religion (Islam), grocery shopping, sports and politics (see figure 3); (2) The houses located on the ridge of and next to the island, in which people live and which, though not physically central, build the social core of the village (see figure 4); and (3) The water surrounding the houses, which is used for fish farming, to keep live-fish, as a play'ground' by children and to connect with people from the same as well as other villages (see figure 5). Thus, the village (physically) is as much over the sea as it is on the island and with the island being so small – mainly just the path connecting the (stilt-)houses –

are not easily recognisable and, therefore, not always the best shot available in terms of quality and content. Nonetheless, the photos should fulfil the purpose of visual illustration. 6 Shortly after I left, more affordable and reliable cell phone and mobile Internet reception was set up in the village, which has made it possible to stay in touch via social media.

9 it is debatable whether one can speak of land. Nevertheless, to leave the village, one ultimately has to travel seaborne and to reach it, one has to head towards the island. The village’s local name is Boe Manes, which translates to ‘sweet water’ and refers to freshwater in contrast to boe aseng, which literally means ‘salty water’ and refers to seawater as well as to the sea. This means that, following the local terms, the village is named after the occurrence of a type and taste of water and not, for example, the formation of the island. During my stay, I was told many times that the access to freshwater, which is said to taste sweet/well, is a huge advantage of the village. The water comes from a mountain top of the neighbouring island and needs to be collected either from there or, if there has been enough rain, it can be obtained from one of the small under-water-pipes that lead the water towards Boe Manes. It was explained to me by several people from Boe Manes that the freshwater access was the reason why they became settled and/or why they settled there and not somewhere else. Although in speaking, there is the differentiation between boe aseng (seawater, the sea), Boe Manes (the village) and boe manes (freshwater), in practice, they all overlap – physically as well as socially (see figure 6-7). The wider sea, then, is where fishing activities are practised and connects people with family, friends and trade partners from other villages (see figure 8). I lived with Ana7 and Nur, a couple in their thirties and their daughter Lia (15) for the first month in their concrete house (see figure 9-10). The other two months, I lived with another family in a wooden stilt house (see figure 11-12) on the other side of the village. While Nur’s family is mainly involved in trading bigger fish and evaluates changes in the village, like the increasing construction of concrete houses, rather positively, the second family makes a living from underwater searching and fishing and is critical toward recent developments. They consist of Erma and Saldrin, who are also in their thirties, their daughters Devi (13) and Paul (11) and their son Elo (7) as well as many relatives who live in Boe Manes and neighbouring villages. Life in those two families is quite different in many aspects. Particularly noticeable to me were the differences in the availability and the handling of food, money and other resources, the work activities and the familial interactions. While for Ana and Nur the somewhat proud and self- ironic motto: “Makan, tidur, makan” (eating, sleeping, eating) ruled the day and implied – this is not to be understood in an arrogant way – that they were wealthy enough to eat a lot and to be idle, Saldrin explained to me in a more serious manner that life, as Sama, was uncertain and hard work. In this context, he introduced me to the saying: “Busai toho – pario kosong” (dry paddle – empty pot) which, as he said, is what “kelupang suku Sama” (Sama people’s life) is like and which he wanted me to use as the title of my thesis. To cut it short, the daily activities,

7 All personal names are either pseudonyms or abbreviated, depending on their recurrence.

10 responsibilities, challenges and worries of these two families as well as their biographies, skills and opinions varied in many aspects but were similar in others. Therefore, I had the opportunity to closely follow different lives in the same village. I was also quite mobile within the region through the economically and socially motivated travel of both families and my visa extension. Furthermore, I got to know many children, who also took an important role in my research, and several adults, like teachers, vendors and politicians through teaching English in the local primary school. Although I felt grounded, especially in the first couple of weeks, this was because I was not used to doing absolutely everything together and being asked constantly where I was going to or coming from, with whom and to do what, and not because I was really set put. In fact, I was moving a lot. I was just not moving alone.

Researching multidimensionally

To acquire a broad understanding of how people life their life and what it means, I worked with a variety of methods. One of the applied methods I used was photo-voice (Harper 2002; Samuels 2004; Briggs & Stedman et al. 2014) with waterproof cameras. My aim was mainly to share the task of researching and to be able to take the perspective of others through the photos they take and the reflections they would make in the following interviews. However, the method did not work by the book and to observe how the method did and did not work and to experiment with it to make it applicable in my particular research context was as informative as the photos (about 1000) and videos (about 140) themselves, which were taken under, in and above water. I noticed that rather than asking people to take photos and explain them to me at a later time, it was more comfortable for them and thus more practicable to take videos, in which they could but did not have to talk and reflect at the moment of production. Another advantage of videos is that this way, one does not grasp an artificially stative perspective but a more natural process of moving. In this context, I also realised that the term ‘perspective’ is too sharp in general. What I primarily aim at by saying ‘researching multidimensionally’, therefore, is not simply to hint at the also important fact that the research was conducted above and under water but to remark that the experience of living and the construction of meaning are, at any moment, too many- sided and complex to be approached as points of view. Furthermore, I conducted semi-structured interviews but, as with photo-voice, it was difficult to get people to talk in an artificial setting and the informal conversations that I had throughout my research in different situations were a lot richer. I, therefore, conducted only

11 nine interviews (including four photo-voice interviews) and focussed on informal conversations, which I wrote down as soon and as precisely as I could like the other observations that I made, filling four notebooks. However, the interviews were still valuable as they initiated conversations with people I normally did not talk to for more than a few minutes, like the kepala desa. I also consider learning the language a method. I had taken a language class before I left but my skills were very limited. Nonetheless, I thought of it as an opportunity because it forced me to learn the language by doing. I see three main advantages in this: (1) The order in which words are learned are in accordance with the frequency of their usage within the research context and therefore point to local significances which might otherwise be overseen, (2) The connotation one learns with the words are situated in locally made experiences and not learned in a mirroring way to one’s native language system which could lead to misinterpretations based on linguistic pre-assumptions, and (3) It makes close attentiveness to facial expressions, gestures and tone of voice as means of communication as well as a generally high attentiveness fundamental. Yet, it also limited me. I had difficulties following conversations that I was not part of because people were either speaking faster or because they used the local language8. I learned many words in Sama as people enjoyed teaching me, but I never reached a point where I could speak or understand more than a few sentences. The most important method in my research was participant observation (Malinowski 1922). As I wanted to know what the ocean means and why/how, following everyday life, I wanted to put myself into the same situations as the respective people to have a similar experience and to understand as emically as possible. Despite the uncertainty that is part of participant observation, I think its strengths clearly outweighs its weaknesses:

The closeness that results from taking part in the lifestyle of others at least to some extent, enables a complex understanding of situations. This experience comprises all senses. Not just seeing and hearing, but also physical and emotional feeling. To ‘experience-with’ [Mit-erleben in the original] is a difficult process. At least partially, the own experience offers access. But one can also be mistaken. It is not enough to be close and in the same situation, to experience the same. It takes a long time or further methodical approaches to understand the experience of others. However, the fact that one can be mistaken about the feelings of others is not a reason to eliminate experiencing as a methodological approach. If one gets wrong when hearing one does not cut off their ear but trains their sense of hearing. (Spittler 2001: 3ff; translated from German)

8 As not everyone in Boe Manes is or speaks Sama it is as common to speak Bahasa Indonesia as it is to speak Sama.

Furthermore, I think there is more than just ‘one’ participant observation. In my research experience I obtained a variety of roles and participant observation became a diverse methodological field. One of my roles was that of a teacher. Originally, I offered to teach English so that, besides the mutual enriching personal encounter, it would not only be me who profits from my stay on a more tangible level. I thought that English, as an international language, would be something more or less free of bias that I could share. However, it turned out to be as beneficial to my research as for the children’s education: When I walked to school in the mornings, I was picked up. At first, I was awkwardly called “Mrs.” not only by the children but by all the people that were working or hanging out in front of their houses, in their small shops or passing the road. They were all observing me and curious about me in a welcoming way. However, being called that, rather than by my name, symbolized the formal status they initially gave me, which disappointed me. Although it was for well-meant respect, they still separated us hierarchically and the unfortunate admiration they had for me just for being European/white was an obstacle to my research. However, after a while, they accepted to call me Charlie and after I had told them several times that, in Europe, many people including me strive for a tan, the continuing comparisons of our skin colour and the assimilating variations following days spent in or out of the sun evolved into a more self-ironic and connecting quality. I mention these aspects to point out that teaching during field research is much more than the teaching activity itself. It was my access to the village as a community. Simply by walking to and from school I was already entering new dimensions. Furthermore, as the children have parents – or most adults have young (grand)children – I also dipped into one of the social cores of the village. Everyone knew me; they knew that I was living in the village, they could ask their children about me, some occasionally followed class on the doorstep or invited me into their houses for a cup of coffee or sugared ice water when I passed by. After a while, I was not the European stranger anymore as through that role – the already existing role of a primary teacher and the role of an English teacher that was specific to me – I became a (functional) member of the village community as a whole and not only a member of my two host families. Not any less important was the contact to the children themselves. Besides learning how teaching them worked and did not work, it was especially them who integrated me and who took me to different parts of the village; for example, onto the hills of the island or into the sea surrounding it. To sum it up, I consider teaching as a special form of participant observation. In this case, I was not participating as an ‘add-on’ but instead, I became a participant by ‘adding in’.

Mainly, however, I did participant observation as an ‘ad-on’ to follow manifold aspects of everyday life and, where I could, took the role of an “apprentice” as a methodological approach (Coy, ed. 1989; Downey & Dalidowicz et al. 2015). Due to my background as a dive instructor, it was easy for me to join activities underwater and to be observant, as for an instructor it is essential to be aware of the (changes in) environmental conditions as well as the physical abilities and mental states of the people in the group at the same time without verbal communication. As I wanted to find out about meanings the ocean has for people, I was especially interested in activities in the sea, but I soon realized that other activities, like cooking, collecting freshwater, washing and the playing of children are also important and need to be conceptualized together. I had the opportunity to take part in many different activities as I was lucky enough to be accepted to accompany and learn from both women and men. Although there were some limits, for example, I needed to make sure that I spend more time with Erma than with Saldrin, so people would not get wrong ideas and gossip, I was not systematically excluded from any domains. Beside work activities, eating or spending time in the house together; the planning ahead, the waiting and changing of plans, the simple conversations about wishes, hopes and worries, the jokes, and the changes in atmosphere at home when guests came and left – or, differently put: the ‘breaks’ between the more articulated activities – were crucial to understanding too. This, I think, clearly shows that close around-the-clock participant observation cannot be replaced by any other method. The nights too were important as sometimes, we had to evacuate due to strong winds. I often woke up because of the weather or other noise. Therefore, my research field was extremely dense. I had no chance to escape it. This goes for sound (e.g., engines and mosque), temperature, humidity and hunger at times. Consequently, to research 24/7 was extremely exhausting but also extremely enriching. To escape, would have meant to miss out. Over time, I grew into the village community almost more than I could take. Although being part of the community was what I had hoped for, it was more stressful than I had expected. Suddenly, there were dozens of new people in my life that cared about me, and I had to learn not only how to behave rightfully (which is not always the same for everyone) but also to understand the motives behind the expectations people had and the moves they made as well as not to disappoint or hurt them. However, only this way, I obtained the multidimensional understanding I believe I have now. In the evaluation and theory building process that followed my research stay, I have reviewed the data several times in full, to get a solid overview before making any codes. In a second step, I have carved out first codes by highlighting the different issues that come up repetitively as well as those standing out by colour marking in the original books and files.

Following that, I have summarized the entire data chronologically, however, in portions according to these codes. Only following that, I have started to put things into a topic-relating order in a single document which, in a next step, I have worked through several times, reconsidering the order and making further summarizations. It is this document out of which I have written my theses and which, therefore, is the foundation of this text as I have added my analysations and literature references to it instead of fitting the data into a predefined text structure or theory. In a final step, after writing and (re)reading other people’s works, I have reviewed the data once more to double-check. To sum it up, by ‘researching multidimensionally’ as a mix of methods and as an approach similar to grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss 1968), triangulation (Flick 2008), and amphibious anthropology (Pauwelussen 2016, 2017), I have tried to grasp different physical, temporal, demographic and socio-cultural dimensions to look at how they play and constitute meaning together rather than at how they relate to and distinguish one from another. I got aware of the difference through the minor role of individuals and the mayor role of togetherness that I experienced in my research field. This is not to say that there are no relational processes. The difference rather lies in where, or if, one sees centres. Therefore, instead of working with affect, which Slaby & Röttger-Rössler approach “as social-relational dynamics unfolding in situated practices and social interaction” (2018: 2) and who focus “on the role that “relational affect” plays in processes of subject formation” (ibid), I look at shared motives that continuously (re)make the maritime socio-cultural sphere I am approaching.

Chapter outline

I will start by looking at people’s daily occupations and, thereby, introduce the reader to my two host families and how people in Boe Manes make a living in the opening chapter one. I will show that work activities are complex not only in terms of knowledge and skill and depend, among other things, on the weather conditions which have a significant impact on the spatial- temporal organisation but also that the activities are interconnected practically, economically and socially. In chapter two, I will look at material aspects. Namely, I will show how the increasing role of concrete houses and money are evaluated and handled differently by different people, for example, as a loss of culture one wants to prevent by escaping, as well as how they can have economically and socially repressing and destabilizing effects, which therefore influence people’s occupations and cause insecurity and worry.

I will move on in taking a more profound look at social aspects in chapter three. I will show that people find their existence in the group rather than in themselves. Although there are conflicts mainly regarding the developments I address in chapter two, the mutual support prevails in difficult situations and rather than to relate to each other, people consist together. Yet, this does not mean that harmony exists or that no pressure is felt on the individual level. In the closing chapter four, I will carve out the notion of mudah-mudahan (hopefully) and how patience, luck and support guide people through the day as an underlying motive. Eventually, I will follow the question of what it implies to ‘live over the sea’ as people put it. Doing so, I will show that the sea is also where it does not appear at first glance. Furthermore, I will review the role of togetherness and sameness and round up by drawing connections to the aforementioned occupations. As a general procedure, I will take up aspects mentioned in previous chapters ever more deeply in subsequent ones. This way, I will follow my own process of understanding: Rather than to move from category to category and to separate what is connected, I will revisit aspects as I introduce new ones and thereby move from the more explicit to the more implicit entanglings as well as from more descriptive to more analytical arguments throughout the thesis. Doing so, I will show how the socio-cultural sphere I am approaching comes into being. It is certainly not my aim to draw a holistic picture of a contained culture or a society representative for maritime societies in general but to point towards the broadness of ‘meaning- making ocean’. As the existing works in maritime anthropology mainly focus on either one specific topic like, e.g. conservation, climate change or sensual experience, or, like the older ethnographies do, describe many aspects in detached chapters, what remains missing are works that look at the entanglements of various dimensions at the small scale. With my theoretical approach of a ‘sphere’ and my methodological approach of ‘researching multidimensionally’, I hope to contribute towards filling that gap. In the conclusion, drawing from my empirical findings, I will revisit points from the introduction and take a brief outlook.

Chapter I: Entangling occupations

In this chapter, I will look at people’s most regular daily activities: their work, or in the case of children, playing. It is those activities that I took part in as an ‘add-on’ participating observer in training – or maybe more importantly: as a learning family member. Instead of introducing both families one after the other, I have chosen to organize this chapter by the different activities as this allows me (1) to work out similarities and differences more directly while not repeating myself unnecessarily, (2) to show how the different activities are connected practically and (3) I do not need to reduce the activities to only two families as I also joined other people occasionally and as the few people with other main occupations, like shop owners, teachers and doctors, are yet involved in these activities partially as cooking, washing and playing concerns every family and everyone goes on trade trips or fishing in one way or another at least sometimes. Nonetheless, this chapter only offers an impression of what the working life in Boe Manes looks like and is tied to the experiences I made. I still consider it important as it sheds light on the most time-consuming aspects of people’s everyday life as these activities are existential occupations that acquire and require knowledge and are spatially, temporally and socially embedded in everyday life (Spittler 2016: 1) and, in that, lay the ground for the chapters that follow.

Mariculture and trade

Mariculture and trade is something every family is involved in, however, there are considerable differences. For example, Saldrin sells the fish and octopus he catches in Boe Manes, which are then further sold to mainland Sulawesi by other people from the village and he travels to W, which is about three hours away, to sell his sea cucumbers and lobsters (see figure 13), which, from there, will be sold further to different parts of Indonesia and China. Although there are a few exceptions, most of what he sells is what he catches himself. Therefore, he is rather a fisherman than a trader but, as he does not only fish for self-supply but to make money to buy, for example, rice, coffee, sugar, vegetables, fruit, oil, salt, clothes, school and fishing9 equipment, materials for the boat and house as well as fuel and cigarettes, he also takes part in trading. Nur, in contrast, buys big and expensive live-fish from different fishermen in Boe

9 I use the term ‘fishing’ for all activities that refer to obtaining fish and seafood from the sea directly to cover the different searching and catching activities in contrast to farming and trading.

Manes, keeps them for three to fourteen days in the tank right beside his house and then takes about three-hour-long boat trips (one way) to sell them at different trade stations in the regions with good profit about two to three times a week (see figure 14-16). The fish is then exported to Hong Kong and Japan. Nur also fishes himself but not regularly and not to sell the catch but to either feed it to the fish he is keeping or to eat it with the family.

Live- fish trading Trading is a financially rather secure occupation, however, it is still affected by different factors. For example, in strong West winds, it is dangerous to go further out sea. Despite Nur is not fishing himself for commercial purposes, he still needs to make long boat journeys to sell the fish he previously bought in Boe Manes. Several people told me about the West wind during my stay. Compared to the other winds, it is stronger, makes the sea, including the village, dangerous and can last for weeks or even months while other winds usually only last a day or a few. Sometimes, they cannot go further out sea for longer periods. In that sense, Nur is depended in two ways; firstly, the fishermen need to be able to go fishing so he can buy fish and secondly, he needs to be able to travel so he can sell fish. Furthermore, Nur told me that the elections that were taking place during my research also affected his business. He could still sell the fish, but the prices were temporarily falling while fuel was not always available and getting more expensive. As he needs to travel comparably long distances regularly, these impacts should not be underestimated. Also, as he is selling live-fish, he needs to sell the fish in good condition. As the fish in the tank occasionally fight each other until they are injured, Nur treats them by injecting iodine into the wounds (see figure 17). To transport them to the trade stations, he fills the hulk of his boat with seawater and checks on the fish about every half hour. It still does occasionally happen that fish do not survive and either die in the tank at his house or on the trade trip. Also, when Nur sells the fish, the people who buy it check on it very critically by visually examining it and taking its weight – something Nur does every day in his house too. When we came back from the business trips, Ana usually had dinner ready. Before or after eating, Nur and Ana always checked the finances together, using a pocket calculator and documenting the profits in a book.

Business trips and social connections Besides these more serious aspects of his trade, these business trips are also socially relevant and enjoyable to him. I accompanied Nur seven times. When we sold the fish in villages, we were always invited for a cup of coffee and a chat except for when we were at swimming trade- platforms, which are exclusively built for trading live-fish that are too small to stay for a break

(see figure 18). People in the region usually always know at least a few people in each of the different villages so whether we visited other Sama villages or those of other ethnic groups, Nur was always welcomed into somebody's house. I made the same experience when I travelled with Saldrin and Erma and even when I travelled by myself to extend my visa. On my way back, I was exempt from paying tourist charges when I said where I lived and whom I knew and I was even spontaneously invited to sleep and eat in an officer’s house who has family in Boe Manes:

In D, an official wanted that I pay the national park fee again. I got angry and told him [in Indonesian] that everybody just wanted my money when they see that I’m European [and assume that I’m a tourist but that I live in Boe Manes]. He then said: “Jangan marah.” (Don’t be angry.) and did not ask me to pay the fees a second time anymore. Instead, he invited me into his house, I got coffee and cake, could take a shower and got dinner and breakfast. … In the morning, he helped me to get to the ferry, to pay the local [not official] fee and told me to find his brother in W so I could travel on cheaply to Boe Manes. (Field note, 07/04/2019)

Nur himself is not originally Sama but from another fisher village in the region. However, he has lived in Boe Manes for about twenty years. This is not uncommon. Although the different villages are usually assigned to one ethnic group, there is a lot of movement in the region through trade and family relations, which creates ethnic diversity also on the village level. On the way back from the trade trips, Nur usually made some calls to family members living across Sulawesi. As there was no cell phone reception in Boe Manes but in a specific area at sea about two hours away, these trips also mattered to him to keep in touch with his brothers. After the first two weeks, I was given Lia's SIM card to contact people in Germany and to let them know where I was, as our attempts to buy me a SIM card had failed and I had not had the chance to let people know where I was and that I had found a village to conduct my research. I was a bit uncomfortable about accepting the SIM card, but they did not seem to mind. Cell phones are not strictly personal goods but shared with others with no worries about privacy violations. Lending me a SIM card several times for a few hours was therefore not a big deal to them, but very helpful to me. The communicational aspect of Nur’s trade trips had then become true for me too. We usually stopped for some time at the spot that provided reception. Furthermore, Nur combined the business trips with leisure trips twice. I think he did this especially for me, but he still knew where he was going and what to expect, so he must have done this before.

Pearl farming Another activity of mariculture is the farming of shell for pearl production. Close to Boe Manes is a marine field of racks that hold shell (see figure 19). Six days a week, mainly young people from Boe Manes work in this business as salary-earning employees10, several of them belonging to Ana's extended family. I followed this activity only once and cannot say whether it is the same routine every day. However, what I observed is that men lift the racks out of the water into the rather wide and flat boat that is used for this work (see figure 20). After that, they go to a swimming platform where women clean the shell racks with their hands in detail while men help by applying water from a hose with pressure (see figure 21). Afterwards, the racks are placed into the sea again. There must be at least some variance in this job as the pearls must be removed at some point. However, what I could see is that the hand movements and the flow of work among the people were routinized and that they were comparably less depended on the weather due to the closeness to the village and the comparably big boat. I saw them leaving and returning almost every day at about the same time in the morning and afternoon.

Underwater searching

Underwater searching I mainly learned about from Saldrin. Although Nur also dives when he checks and maintains his tank, this is only a part of his main profession and not the base of it, like Saldrin is involved in trading but is not a trader. Plus, Nur's diving activities are not connected to catching. With Ana, on the other hand, I went underwater searching for kima (hippopus), which is a big shell, in shallow waters around Boe Manes (see figure 22). We found three and prepared and cooked them afterwards (see figure 23-24). It was very delicious, and she told me happily that, if I liked it, I would have to: “cari, ambil, makan.” (search, take, eat). I also went searching for shell and octopus with Lia and her uncle Ma. In this case, we did not find much. Only Ma, who usually works at the pearl farm, found one shell that is collected for jewellery production. Nevertheless, diving activities are neither limited to fishermen but are also done by traders and other members of the village, nor are they limited to men but can be done by women and girls too. Yet, underwater searching as a profession and main source of income I found only among a few men in Boe Manes. I choose to call it that as it was referred to as cari (search) gurita (octopus), cari udang (lobster), cari teripang (sea cucumber) and so on. I add 'underwater' because octopus, for example, can also be caught from the boat without

10 See Gaynor for an account of how working as employees in the cultured-pearl-industry gives young Sama women the opportunity to continue living in their villages while earning an income as the dependency on cash increases (2010: 89ff).

20 diving, using a completely different technique and thus, rather falls under the category of overwater catching.

Searching seafood When I first joined Saldrin before I had moved in with him and Erma, whom I came to know by teaching English to their daughter Paul in school, one of the main difficulties affecting his work was very obvious already: the weather. Almost all our appointments needed to be either rearranged regarding the daytime or completely cancelled for the day. I was told many times: "harus tunggu/kita tunggu" (need to wait/we are waiting). Often, I waited for hours in the kitchen with Erma until Saldrin and I could leave, or I was sent home to come back in either a few hours or the next day. At first, I was a bit unsure if they did not want me to join but as, most of the time, it was either raining heavily already or it started a bit after I was told that we could not go, this probably was not the case. Rain is not necessarily a reason to stay in Boe Manes. I experienced rain further out sea several times, but as it often comes with strong winds, it can get very cold and dangerous. After I had moved in with them, plans also changed all the time but it had become easier for me to join as then, like Saldrin, I could get ready within minutes. During the daytime, Saldrin usually searches octopus. To do so, he swims pulling his boat behind him (see figure 25). He wears a mask but no snorkel, fins or wetsuit. When he sees a rock that would make a typical hideout for an octopus, he dives to check whether there is one in it. If so, he either fixes the rope of his boat to a rock or, if no strong winds or tides are moving the boat, he keeps it in his hands. He then uses two metal sticks; one to prick the octopus until it attempts to flee and the other one to catch the octopus in the right instant. I never saw him miss one. What I did see one time though, was that a rather big octopus grabbed him by his arm and pulled him down. I could see that Saldrin needed to apply a lot of strength to escape it, but he did not show any sign of panic. Eventually, he won the fight and when we returned to the surface we laughed together. He took some breaths, went down again and caught the octopus. After bringing the octopus to the surface, Saldrin climbs into his boat and hits them with a wooded stick several times until they are dead and jumps back into the water to keep searching (see figure 26-29). We usually went for about two hours. As the water is salty, it does not cost much effort to stay on the surface, however, because it is so salty, I always had a nasty taste in my mouth after a while. I wonder if this is why Saldrin considers cigarettes fundamental to his work, but I did not think of asking while I was there. Besides the taste, I could feel the regular lifting of my head to take breaths in my neck. In strong currents, it also got exhausting to move forward and when it rained it was cold being on the boat (see figure 30). We usually went to

21 the same reef which is about half an hour away from Boe Manes and between two and seven meters deep. Saldrin found between two and twelve octopus per trip, with the average being around four or five. Although I know how to look for octopus from my work as a dive instructor, I never found one. Yet, I had fun trying. I wanted to contribute – to help (bantu) – like Erma and Saldrin had said they would and did when I was unhappy living with Ana and Nur and thereby relieved me when my worries grew as Ana and Nur, though well-intentioned, hindered my research by being overly protective11. Putting an effort into finding an octopus without knowing whether I would or not was pleasant. However, it was also disappointing, especially when the previous days had been economically unsuccessful, and I knew that Saldrin and Erma were already worried about how to get through the next days.

Searching seafood by night Saldrin also searches for lobster and sea cucumber during the night (see figure 31). Here, I could join Saldrin only one time. Joining him as a woman during the day was not a big deal. During the night, however, this was more complicated as in the dark other people could not see us. Also, Saldrin, Erma and other people told me many times that being in the sea during the night was very dangerous. Besides the weather, which can be dangerous during day and night, in and outside the village, in the water itself are poisonous jellyfish and needlefish that are active during the night and react to torchlight. I was told that Sama have died because of it before. I was a bit sceptical as I had not heard about this danger or any incident in this context when I had taught night dives in a different part of Indonesia, but I recently came across an article about a needlefish attack in Sulawesi (BBC 2020), so it probably depends on the region. The one time I joined at night, I stayed on the boat as I had no torch, I was already cold and I knew that it would take hours to get back. Yet, from the boat, I could observe a similar scenario as during the day. Saldrin swam with his boat and when he saw something, he dived down. Sea cucumbers and shell can simply be collected. To catch lobsters, which are sold alive, he needs to grab them very quickly with the hand. Occasionally, he also shoots them with a small speer gun, but as he cannot sell them dead, he usually does not catch them this way. He goes out at night several times a week despite he usually also works during the day. Many times, I woke up from strong thunderstorms and was relieved to hear that, most of the times, Saldrin was coming back to Boe Manes basically together with the bad weather. His skills to forecast the

11 I changed the host family after one month because of that. There is no need to go into detail. However, what matters here, is that Erma and Saldrin invited me into their home and made sure that this move was undertaken in a way that did not cause social problems for Ana and Nur, which was a big relief for me and pushed my research forward immensely.

22 weather are impressive. When he came back earlier than planned, I knew that a storm was not far away or when there was a storm and he had not yet returned, it did not take long until he did. That he arrived more or less at the same time as the storm hit, therefore, does not mean that he did not know about it sooner but that he knew how to use as much of the timeframe between the storms as possible to collect as much as possible. Another time, there was a small earthquake while he was out. When he came back, he already knew, or at least he was not surprised, as he had noticed that the fish were behaving accordingly: "Ikan tidak naik." (The fish did not come up [to the shallows].). Despite the difficulties, like trade, underwater searching activities are also pleasant. The reef accommodates beautiful coral, a lot of different fish and has clear water. Going there, besides working, also means to get away from the packed and noisy village life for a few hours and to have some quiet time. When we passed the waters between two small islands, which, coming from Boe Manes, are like a gate to the wider sea, we both smiled every time (see figure 32). One time, when we went to the reef after Saldrin had had severe back pain for about a week and was unable to work, this became especially evident as the pain in his face, despite he had not fully recovered, disappeared when we passed the two islands and embraced the wider view. Also, he had been quiet for days due to the pain but became talkative again there. Generally, Saldrin used the breaks we made on the boat before, during or after diving to tell me about ‘Sama life’ and things he sees critically in the village – during the journeys, the engine is too loud to talk and one needs to sit still in front of each other as the boats are long and slender.

Spear hunting Saldrin also took me underwater spear hunting12 once. Although he clearly knew what he was doing, this was something he did as a favour to me as he knew I was interested to see it and not something he usually does. He caught a few middle-sized fish on a deeper reef, between ten and twenty meters, when we visited a brother of his who lives in T. I was allowed to try it myself and managed to shoot a small fish on my second attempt. It was easier than I had expected and despite I had some fun doing it, I also felt sorry for the little fish, which was only as big as my hand, and as it was not one of Saldrin's usual activities, I did not ask about it again. To conclude, also underwater searching has a social dimension and is not solely linked to making a living or sensual perception. Furthermore, it directly entangles with trade and cooking and is strongly dependent on the weather conditions.

12 See Ota 2006 for an ethnography of underwater spear gun fishing.

Overwater catching

Overwater catching also covers several techniques and sometimes includes diving. It is done during day and night and can, depending on the technique, be performed individually or in a group. Although it is more often done by men, it is not uncommon for women to either join or go by themselves. Here, I did not have one particular teacher as it was neither the main profession of Nur nor that of Saldrin but I accompanied many different people from both families, including Nur and Saldrin, and their friends. The most significant subdivision here is that of fishing pakai nilon (using nylon/a hand line) and pakai net (using a net). Most of the overwater catching activities are carried out within five to fifteen minutes away from Boe Manes and are therefore more economical concerning fuel. The closeness to the village makes it also a little less dependent on the weather conditions and, as the kinds of fishes caught by net can be sold in Boe Manes in the form of intermediary trade, one does not need to invest money and time to travel to sell the catch in other parts of the region. Yet, the majority of the fishes that are caught with these techniques can only be sold with a small profit which is why these activities are performed by almost everyone occasionally, however, not necessarily as a main profession.

Catching fish with hand-line The first time I went catching fish was during the day together with Ana and Nur using hand lines (see figure 33). As one holds the thin line in the hand directly with no further handle, I had difficulties to pull it up without entangling the meters of pulled-in fishing line. Furthermore, my hands hurt as one has to make tight fists to not let the thin nylon line slip when fish are pulling on the other end of it. With some practice, following different people, I got better at pulling in the line. I learned that I just needed to put it loosely and in no particular order onto the boat and keep it wet. Furthermore, one attaches up to three hooks with pieces of fish as lures as well as a weight to be able to lower the line. If one is catching smaller fish, it is difficult to tell whether it is a fish fighting, or only the weight moving in the current. However, if one is catching bigger fish, it becomes more difficult to pull the fish in without losing it. If it is done too quickly, the line can easily tear but if it is done too slowly, the fish can escape.

Catching fish by night I also went catching fish with Ana and Nur in the late evening. Here, we used a net as well as hand lines. It was only a small net, about three square metres in size. Nur placed the net inside the water, attached to the boat and waited. After a while, he pulled it back in. He did this several

24 times and we used some of the caught fish as lure to fish with nylon, which was the same procedure during the night as during the day (see figure 34). On this trip, we ate on the boat. Ana had prepared rice and brought the ingredients for chilli sauce. She then made a fire on the boat to grill some of the fish and cut the chilli and tomatoes into small pieces in her hand (see figure 35). While we ate, they told me that Ana had not been catching fish during the night for five years as she did not have the time and Nur had not been for two years as there was a big storm once in which he fell out of his boat and had to swim back to Boe Manes. I was not entirely sure if they were making this up or were at least exaggerating. However, the danger of fishing at night is something many people told me about. People die occasionally. The areas further away from Boe Manes are strongly affected by the weather while the confined area in Boe Manes is dangerous because of crocodiles, which stay in the mangroves of the neighbouring island during the day but swim in the sea and also sometimes climb onto the Island during the night. Therefore, I think that their story might have been decorated in parts, but this was not to lie to me but to make me understand the seriousness.

Preserving fish The next morning, Ana made ikan garam (salted fish) to conserve our big catch (see figure 36). Ikan garam is often made and eaten in Boe Manes as it makes the fish last for two months. It is a way of dealing with the changes in catch size and the weather conditions, which sometimes make fishing impossible for weeks.

Net fishing I also joined a female cousin of Erma and her father and brother as well as Saldrin, his father and several brothers of him to go net fishing. For this technique, a huge net is used which people craft from several smaller nets in advance – a work that takes weeks. Furthermore, this specific method of net fishing can only be carried out in a group: Before the net is placed into the water, somebody dives down to check if the spot is good. If it is not, the boat is relocated until the right spot is found. Then, a big circle is drawn with the net to lock fish inside of it. Afterwards, all but one of the crew swim inside the circle, making a lot of noise, while the person on the boat also makes noise by tapping the paddle on the boat. Doing so, the fish, on their attempt to flee, swim right into the meshes of the net. Then, the people in the water dive around the net to make sure the fish are caught securely. They then climb back into the boat to finally pull in the net together while they take the fish out at the same time (see figure 37-40). The process is

25 repeated several times. The catch size can vary significantly13 and in accordance with it, returning to Boe Manes is usually accompanied with either disappointment and worry – not blame – or relief and happiness – not pride – and is, like the other fishing and searching activities that I have already introduced, referred to as either beruntung (lucky) or tidak beruntung (not lucky) (see figure 42). Similarly, Schneider observed in Papua New Guinea:

Several old and experienced fishermen firmly insisted, in this or similar wording: ‘We do not know what will happen at sea, if there will be many fish or perhaps no fish at all. We just try it out. Sometimes fish are plentiful, sometimes they are not. Who knows about them?’ Correspondingly, Pororan fishermen who boasted about a large catch did not praise their own foresight or skill, but dwelled at length on their own surprise at running into so many fish just when they were least expecting it. (2012: 27)

Although net fishing is partially done underwater, I still place it within overwater catching as the catch is collected from above the water and the activity is referred to as mancing (fishing, catching fish) and not cari. Furthermore, the inside view of the underwater sea remains limited as this technique is carried out in deep and sandy areas, which means that the visibility is not comparable to that in the clear waters of the reefs. Nevertheless, it requires the ability to dive and, as it is carried out in a group, is based on and (re)establishes social and kin bonds. In the last week of my stay, which was also the last week before Ramadan, Saldrin went fishing with his family almost every day. He told me that his father does not know how to search for octopus and lobster, so his ability to accumulate money for Ramadan – a time where people do not have the physical strength to go fishing – was limited. Saldrin, therefore, preferred to go fishing together with his family more often than he usually does as together they had a better chance to make big catches. I think he was motivated by his responsibility for his family on the one hand and the less fruitful searching for octopus in the week before on the other hand. Despite the economic aspects, this also meant time spent together with his father and brothers who live in K, another village. It is not unusual for them to meet, but the meetings are always linked to either work and trade activities or special occasions like weddings and then extended by eating or drinking coffee together. This is typical in Boe Manes and represents the mobility and merging of the social and economic aspects of everyday life, which can neither be temporally divided into a professional work and a private social/family life nor be spatially limited to the village site.

13 See also Sather: “There is a large element of unpredictability in Bajau Laut fishing. There are times when netting ventures are a total failure, and even experienced fishermen return to the village from time to time emptyhanded or with not enough fish to market. From time to time during the year, fishing may barely cover the immediate food needs of the family’s house group.” (1997: 131)

Cooking

Cooking is an activity that takes up a considerable amount of time every day. Just to prepare drinking water and hot water for coffee, freshwater needs to be boiled for thirty minutes usually twice a day (see figure 43). Concerning food, Eli cooks three meals a day and Erma, although most of the time she only cooks two meals, often cooks for a lot of people, which means that she sometimes cooks two or three times per meal to prepare enough for everyone. When I lived with Ana, I was involved in cooking on a daily basis. She usually only cooks for Nur and Lia. I usually prepared the chilli sauce and the pastes Ana uses in the cooking process under her guidance in a mortar (see figure 44). She also taught me about preparing fish and other seafoods, which indicates that cooking too, requires knowledge about sea life such as the different kinds of fish species, the seasons when they are caught and about their anatomy. For example, when Ana cooked cumi-cumi (squid), she cut out the ink to use it as a sauce or, after we had dived for kima, she separated different parts of the meat to cook it with different flavours (see figure 45-46). I know that other women, including Erma, have this knowledge too as I was invited to eat in different houses and found similar dishes, but it is Ana I got the closer insights from. Although cooking clearly is work done by women, Ana once told me when I visited her after I had moved, that Nur had cooked the other day as he did not want to wait when she was busy in the village. She told me amusedly, like she was talking about a child: "Dia sudah tahu." – that Nur, who was sitting beside us as she told the story, ‘already knows’ how to do it. This is the typical kind of humour between the two. While there are gender-associated activities the lines are not very strict and friendly mocking within the family is legitimate. I also saw Saldrin cooking occasionally; simple things like yam or sea cucumbers which need to be cooked in water for thirty minutes and dried in the sun several times before they can be sold (see figure 50). Nevertheless, most of the time, it was either Erma or Devi who prepared the sea cucumbers for selling. Here again, the entanglement of knowledge, people and places through work tasks (searching/catching at different parts of the sea, cooking/conserving/farming in Boe Manes and trading over distance) become evident. Besides the practical entanglements, cooking also shows the obligatory entanglements of everyday life. Being a mother of three and oldest daughter out of nine siblings, Erma does not only cook for her children and husband but often also for her elderly parents, her two teenage sisters and one of her brothers and his wife, who all live in her parent’s house as well as for Saldrin's father and brothers when they return from net fishing and take a break in Boe Manes before returning to K. Accordingly, Saldrin is under the pressure of making enough money to buy rice for all of them (see figure 47). He often goes out to the reef in the morning

27 as well as during the night, even when he is in bad shape or when the weather conditions are bad. Whether the catch is good or not directly affects the consumption of food. Although most of what Saldrin catches (octopus, lobster, sea cucumbers) is normally not eaten by them, the catch is still the basis for buying rice and other foods. Although rice was clearly the main food of every meal and the portions of fish were never big, we usually ate bigger meals with more choices; like fish, chilli sauce and vegetables, if the catch was good (see figure 48). When the catch was small, however, we often only ate rice and a tiny piece of ikan garam or a spoon of noodles to add some flavour to the rice. I also noticed a correlation between a good catch and cake or other treats, which were bought occasionally after a good business day (see figure 49). Sometimes, when Saldrin went net fishing and the fish could not all be sold, we ate more fish, but this was usually not the case. Most of the time, the fish we ate was caught by relatives of Erma. For Erma, therefore, cooking mainly means managing to prepare several kilos of rice twice a day. What I want to point out here is that the catch – or the economic outcome – is consistent with how much is/can be cooked and eaten while too, what is eaten and shared – the social responsibilities – are consistent with the catching efforts, making fishing and cooking a complex multidimensional sphere rather than a dialectic process. Furthermore, like net fishing, cooking articulates the familial and the wider social structures in the village and the mutual support. For example, while I was living in Boe Manes, there were several bigger celebrations which required a lot of food to be prepared. To do so, the family members and friends of the respective hosts helped to prepare huge amounts of food, one or even several days before the celebration. Here, men were also involved. For example, they helped to cook rice in incredibly big pots and opened numerous coconuts. These works were accompanied by easy-going conversations about current issues like the ongoing elections or the recent earthquake (see figure 51-52).

Collecting water

When I collected water with Ana and Lia, we drove to a neighbouring island about ten minutes away from Boe Manes, as there is a water pipe installed, coming from a mountain spring. However, when it rains, they also put buckets beside the house, placed halfway underneath the roof. This way, not only the water landing on the surface area of the bucket is collected but also some of the water that lands on the roof is led into the bucket. They told me that they can use rainwater for washing and showering but not for cooking or drinking. However, as it is the

28 washing and showering that uses up the bigger amounts of water, collecting rainwater spares them work. Collecting rainwater is also done by children in a playful way (see figure 53-56). When I had moved in with Erma and Saldrin, the rain situation was pretty good concerning the accessibility of freshwater in Boe Manes. The spring on the neighbouring island was holding enough water to further lead it through the three underwater hoses that carry water to Boe Manes. The biggest access point referred to as tempat air (water place) is right beside Erma's and Saldrin's house (see figure 57-58). As there are usually people waiting in line to collect water and as they have to walk or come with their boats to not have to carry the heavy containers, Erma often let them go first and either waited until late in the evening, got up early in the morning or in the middle of the night to collect water. When I heard her, I sometimes got up to help. I also collected water during the day when I washed my laundry or to take a shower but as the spot was usually busy and I never got entirely sure about how the waiting in line worked, I usually only filled several containers to not be in the way of others. If there has not been enough rain, Erma and Saldrin need to go to the neighbouring island again. However, if there is too much rain, the water is red and cannot be used for drinking and cooking. A few times, Erma and I collected water right before heavy rain arrived to have enough clean water for the next one or two days. It is therefore not only fishing that is done during day and night and that is attuned to the weather conditions. Furthermore, the collected water is stored separately for drinking, cooking, washing or the toilet and when drinking water is getting old, it is kept to be used in the kitchen or the bathroom (see figure 59). Erma also collects water for the doctor and the headmistress voluntarily. In return, she receives material gifts like money or, during my stay, a wall clock and a headscarf and the children are allowed to continue visiting the local primary school even when the fees are temporarily not paid. Collecting water, therefore, is not limited to the immediate supply of freshwater as a resource within the family as it may seem at first glance. Neither is it determined only by the rain but there is also an economic side to it as well as a social one and, although this work is mainly done by women, again, this is not exclusively the case. Nur and Saldrin both occasionally collected water and although the majority were women, I saw men collecting water every day, just like I saw women returning from fishing or business trips every day too. As the access to fresh water in Boe Manes is the reason why people chose to live at this specific point over the sea, fresh water rather is to be understood as a spatial fix at sea rather than a spatial separation from the sea. Furthermore, if fresh water is not available in Boe Manes, collecting water, just like catching fish, becomes a reason to travel over the sea. Thus, freshwater should not be conceptualized as separate from or oppositional to the sea but as a part

29 of the maritime sphere. In contrast to trading and fishing activities, however, the economic and social differences vary less when it comes to freshwater. While there are considerable economic differences between traders and fishermen, the need for and accessibility of freshwater and the techniques to collect it are more or less the same for the vast majority in the village – obviously, very young and very old people are exempt from this work. Only very few people in high positions, like the headmistress or the doctor who, as I have explained, return other services and goods for the help they receive in collecting water, take a special position. Nonetheless, they depend on the rain (the availability and quality/colour) just as much as everyone else.

Washing

The social side of freshwater becomes even more clear when looking at washing the laundry and showering. Although Ana washes the laundry in front of her house, the majority of women – in this case I have never seen a man doing the work except for a biologically male person living and being accepted as a woman – wash the laundry beside the tempat air and talk. Consequently, the tempat air right beside Erma's house is usually busy with at least two people; for example, one collecting water and one washing the laundry. Sometimes, when I was bored or had a question, I went there to socialize or ask people (see figure 60). Therefore, besides the access to freshwater, the tempat air is also important as an informal meeting point. About washing the laundry as practice there is not much to say. The clothes are washed by hand in a bucket with a brush and need to be wrung out, which to me was more effort than the actual cleaning. The weather does not really matter while one washes; I washed when it rained and was not the only one. But, if the rain has been very heavy the days before and the water is red as a consequence, it may discolour the clothes and the weather, as well as the daytime, need to be considered for drying. I washed my clothes in the evening a few times, but they then smelled bad because without the sun they did not dry fast enough. Furthermore, the clothes need to be taken off the line before it starts to rain and be put back on afterwards. The same goes for strong winds. Washing the laundry, therefore, means a lot of work and takes up to several hours of the day. It can also be a paid job for teenage girls to make some pocket money (see figure 61). Furthermore, the tempat air is the spot where a lot of people wash themselves. When I asked why they did not take their showers in the bathroom so they could shower nakedly – the toilets are usually outhouses over the sea, so the washing technique would have been the same, just in private (see figure 62) – they told me that they did not want to be alone and because they

30 could not be naked in public, they kept their clothes on. Where I had expected that not showering in private would be a compromise to not having to carry water to the bathroom, in fact, not wanting to be alone was the reason for it, with not having to carry water being a positive side-effect.

Sea bathing

As I have mentioned before, the children also took a considerable role in my research, and we spent a lot of time together outside of school too. Most importantly, we went swimming together almost every day. Usually, it was the little son of Erma and Saldrin, Elo, who came up to me to ask if I wanted to mandi laut (bath in the sea) and many other children joined us. But also before I had moved, when I went swimming in front of Ana and Nur's house, it usually did not take long until children were joining me. In the afternoon, sometimes the school children, mainly boys, were playing at the central pier of Boe Manes and jumped into the water multiple times and dived down, bringing sand back up from the bottom to prove that they dived all the way down (see figure 5). When it rained, children also played in the rain on the pier while filling containers with water (see figure 54). Here, playing and helping/working overlap. It was also children who carried the water Erma collected for the teacher and doctor to them. Generally, the children took good care of me. For example, when we played in front of and underneath the stilt house, which is where we went most of the time (see figure 63-66), they gave me little crabs that they had collected from the stilts and ripped out their nips, so they could not hurt me. They also checked whether the water was high enough to bath at all and to jump into it, which depends on the tide and, especially during full and new moon, changes immensely within only a few hours. Furthermore, they checked for me whether it was still light enough, so there would not be any crocodiles in the water yet. None of the children, aged five and older, were afraid to play in the water. Furthermore, it was quite noticeable to me that rather than swimming, they preferred to dive down; instead of moving horizontally on the surface, they rather moved vertically in the sea within a smaller surface area. Especially with Elo, I had the impression that he could not yet swim very far or for a long time and, therefore, sank down about a meter to relax and then moved back up to take a breath before relaxing under the water again. As the children were always playing in the water in groups, either in front of or underneath somebody’s house, there was no need for the parents to watch them actively.

Occasionally, the children also took me on boat trips. They knew how to and were sometimes allowed to drive themselves (see figure 67-68). On one trip, they found lobsters and later told their family to take them. Last but not least, some children go fishing either with their parents or their friends before dinner, starting at the age of about eight years, mainly for fun but also to contribute with a little catch. They also know a lot about the different species of fish which proved when they took a look at my fish identification books:

Especially Elo but also Paul and Re were interested, told me the Sama names and explained to me which fishes are tasty or dangerous. I was surprised by how well they could connect the juveniles with their respective mature version. Clownfish were referred to as ‘Nemo’. The interest lasted through both thick books. (Field note, 11/03/2019)

When I showed the books to older children or adults, they also mentioned whether fishes were expensive. Accordingly, fish is thought in terms of danger, taste and profit and children, boys and girls, start to learn about it at a very young age as they play with their friends and eat with and help their families.

Chapter conclusion Like the Sama-saying Saldrin told me suggests, a dry paddle means an empty pot and to fill a pot, one inevitably needs to travel across the sea, whether it is to go fishing, to sell fish and seafood or to buy rice and other foods. Also, freshwater, just like fish, is part of the game as it is essential to fill a pot as well. Villages, fishing grounds, freshwater access points, trade stations, shops and markets, institutions like schools and celebrations like weddings, therefore, must be understood as one immediate, spatial-temporally open sphere which is marked and navigated by needs and preferences – meanings – above, across and underneath the sea. Thus, fishing and farming, cooking and eating, sharing and trading, the different forms of water and weather conditions, movement and (im)mobility and, most importantly, the inherent obligations, worries, aims and wishes of people must be studied in their entanglements to approach ‘meaning-making-ocean’. As this chapter shows, all practices are, in one way or another, connected and require routinized flexible movement over the sea for existence.

Chapter II: (Un)settling materialities

In this chapter, I will look at people’s opinions on and handling of concrete houses and money, which both challenge the flexible movement over the sea for existence. Here too, I mainly draw from my insights as participant observer. However, the observations I present here, I made in the role of a compassionate rather than a learning family member with whom worries and hopes were shared. The observations are therefore not directly tied to working activities but instead to what the people I was with did and told me about between the more explicit actives or when we relaxed in the house. Furthermore, I also draw from observations I made in the village, interviews I conducted with people other than the members of my two host families as well as teaching and photo-voice. The focus in this chapter lies on the effects concrete houses and money have. This is important to understand how they are linked to the working activities I have described as well as to social aspects that I will look at in the following chapter.

Concrete houses and ‘losing culture’

During the three months I lived in Boe Manes, numerous concrete houses were under construction. I asked Ana about it, and she told me that twenty new houses were being built from governmental social funding. This is a considerable amount as the total number of houses is only about one hounded. As I was interested in the decision making of people concerning living on boats, on the reef and in the partially island-based village from the start, I thought it was important to focus, among other things, on the processes and evaluations concerning this development. I asked different people about it, prominently my two host families and their relatives and friends, but also the kepala desa, adults that were not related to or friends with either of my host families as well as some of the school children. I also had the chance to attend the up-building of the basic structure of a house, which was done by about thirty men while the women were preparing food and, last but not least, I made my own experiences as I lived in a concrete house as well as a wooden stilt house.

My personal experience Starting with my own experience, I can say very clearly that I preferred living in the wooden stilt house. Inside the concrete house, it was extremely hot. Especially during the night, I was struggling because I was not supposed to open the window as Ana was worried about ghosts.

During the day, it was also very hot inside but outside, the sun was very strong with no shade nearby. As the kitchen part of the house was made from wood, it was more comfortable to stay there. Apart from the temperature, the plain concrete walls created a rather cold atmosphere, and the floor was hard to sit on. Furthermore, it was difficult to clean. Although Ana, Lia and I swept several times a day, it did not take long for ants to return and when food was spilt on the floor, wiping it away with water was not completely effective. I was a lot more comfortable living in the wooden stilt house. For once, what I noticed most intensely, was the warm atmosphere inside the building. The colours of the sunbeams appeared in a warm brown whereas in the concrete house they had appeared in a cold grey (see figure 69-70). As the house is built over water and the floor is made from loosely placed blanks, one can see and hear the water beneath, which sloshes against the stilts quietly and reflects the sunbeams into the house. The roof is made from palm leaves, instead of corrugated metal, and there is an open space between the walls and the roof, which allows the wind to circulate. It still got hot in there too, but the heat was much more bearable. Cleaning was also easier as sweeping would simply push the dust from the fire through the spaces between the planks and other dirt could be washed away by spilling out buckets of seawater, which would also just wash through the spaces back into the sea. I slept very well in this house, despite – or maybe because – wind and rain often whipped through the walls and the roof. Quite often, heavy rain would enter in the form of spray and refresh me. They were also rats running through the stilt house during the night. Although this might sound disgusting, they were more like little shy mice and all that bothered me about them was that they ate my soap whenever I had forgotten to store it sealed. In comparison, Ana and Nur had two cats who were very quick in stealing cooked food. Lenhart writes about similar experiences made by Orang Suku Laut that were settled in concrete houses on land by the Indonesian government:

People told me that living in houses on land had been a bad experience. They argued that they were not used to living on land or in settlements with a big population. They were also not able to reach their boats during low tide and because there often was no wind on land, mosquitoes that transmit illnesses such as malaria abounded. Also, because the houses were not raised on piles, dangerous animals like snakes or centipedes could enter. Finally, the houses were dirty, garbage disposal was a severe problem, the concrete floor was unhealthy, and so on. (2008: 333)

My host families’ opinions Moving on to other people’s opinions, I need to say that they varied. When I asked Ana and Nur, for example, they told me that, although it gets very hot in concrete houses, they are safer in storms. They told me that they had built their concrete house only a year ago and before that,

34 had lived in a wooden stilt house about fifty meters from where they live now. They explained to me that a heavy storm had crushed their house and following the experience, they preferred to rebuild one made from concrete on the island. Erma and Saldrin told me the story differently. They said that they had already built the house a few years ago and that their house had not been destroyed in a storm. I was not eager to find the ‘truth’ here, or to find out who was ‘lying’. I think that in Boe Manes, time is not seen as something that needs to be measured in exact years so there was not necessarily somebody lying but the period of time that Ana and Nur had lived in the concrete house was estimated differently by the two families and, concerning the storm, this again, might have been experienced more intensely by Ana and Nur as it was their house. When I lived with Erma and Saldrin, I also experienced several times when the wind was so strong that we had to evacuate the wooden stilt house, which was moving in the wind, and we all were relieved to be able to wait in the concrete house on the island. In these occasions, Saldrin was clearly worried about the stilt house. One time, he even took out the most precious things from the house and told me to run to get my things out of there as well while he kept observing and checking the house. In the end, nothing happened but I can understand that experiences like this can lead people into giving up their stilt house in exchange for a concrete house, especially when they have not yet made the experience of living in one and are not aware of their downsides. It is also necessary to mention that the spoken opinions, the situational experiences and the future-directed actions are not always congruent but complex. While Ana told me that concrete houses are better because they are stronger, she clearly enjoyed spending time in the wooden house when she brought me to Erma and Saldrin the day I moved, and I think she was somewhat pitiful for having given up her old house:

When we arrived, Ana came into the house with me. I had the impression that she enjoyed being there. She laughed and played with the baby [Erma’s nephew] and evidently liked the atmosphere in the house. (Field note, 09/03/2019)

Saldrin, on the other hand, who disapproved the increase in concrete houses in Boe Manes, continued to build the new, concrete part of their house step by step whenever he had the time and the money to get new materials. He told me that they did not have much choice but to build one themselves as money was given to them to do so. In more detailed and separated conversations with him and Erma I found out that they, in fact, had asked for that supportive money, which therefore was not forced upon them immediately. Nevertheless, this demand must be assessed in the context of their general indigence and, therefore, cannot simply be seen

35 as an opportunistic or convinced action but a necessary one to retain their status within the wider community.

Efforts of the kepala desa and further dynamics This got especially clear when I interviewed the kepala desa who said that he wanted stability for the village and to whom the constructing of houses was an important step towards achieving security for the people within the village as well as status of the village within the region. Furthermore, he thought it was important to help those families who cannot afford this by themselves and was proud of his effort to obtain governmental funding for them. Consequently, if Saldrin and Erma had not asked for or taken that supportive money, this would not necessarily have suggested that they did not want a concrete house, but that they did not need help and support in a more general way, which consequently could lead to less help when they need it. Thus, although I do think that Saldrin and Erma see some benefits in having a concrete house, their decision was strongly informed by the overall village dynamics. That they preferred the wooden house became clear not only in our conversations but also in everyday life as we spent most of the time in the wooden part of the house. They even moved a big closet from there into the new concrete house, after the concrete floor had been poured, to generate more space as the visitors also preferred to hang out in the old stilt house instead of the new concrete house.

Houses and safety When I asked different people about earthquakes, they said that wood would be better; that in a concrete house one would be pasti mati (definitely dead) while in a wooden house one would only be injured. As Indonesia is prone to earthquakes, I was surprised that it was not a severe matter for them, but they told me that they would not get strong earthquakes and that nothing had happened so far. I was also worried about the chopped-off hills beside the road which look like cliffs. The majority of people I asked told me that this also was not a problem, but some told me more critically that a few people had already died from landfalls and that the hills were getting instable as, due to the chopping-off of rocks to use them for constructing concrete houses, the trees, which are important to stabilize the hills, are dying (see figure 71-72). In this context, I was also told by some people that Boe Manes used to be more beautiful in the past when it was still green. Another small problem that was mentioned to me, is that the goats, of which about one hundred live on the island, eat the concrete of the houses because it is salty. The aspect of security is therefore twofold. While in situations of strong winds and storm, concrete houses may indeed be more secure, in situations of earthquakes and heavy rainfalls,

36 however, they are less secure in a direct way regarding the houses themselves as well as in an indirect way regarding landfalls as a consequence to chopping off the hills to build houses.

Houses and status Looking at status, I noticed, when I asked the children to write down words they wanted to learn in English as a homework, that several of them wrote rumah besar (big house) as a combination of words. As they completed this homework at the very time that many houses were newly being built, I think rumah besar, as vocabulary request, refers to concrete houses, which are usually bigger than the wooden ones. Although “big” is not necessarily a positive attribute, I think in this context, it was meant as something one aims for. Looking at the region more widely, I cannot say that the material of the houses determined the status of the villages. While T, for example, which has about five wooden houses and twenty concrete houses was seen by everyone I talked to as a rather problematic village because it has no freshwater and high crime rates, or K, which I was told is sulit (difficult) because too, there is no freshwater, and because people drink alcohol, other villages with hardly any concrete houses were seen in a more positive light because they did not have such problems. Furthermore, when I spoke to people outside of Boe Manes, for example when I was looking for a village for my research or when I travelled to extend my visa, people seemed to have a positive attitude towards Boe Manes because of people they knew and again, because of the freshwater access. Consequently, I think that status is something that does matter regarding houses, however, rather in an ideal way than in an immediate one while personal connections and social stability seemed to be important more directly.

Houses and culture There is also the aspect of lupa budaya (forgetting or losing culture) in the context of houses, which was mentioned to me especially by Saldrin, but there were several other people too. For example, a young woman related to Erma, Fi, who lives in her parents’ house with her husband and their two children (seven and three years old), was building her own house at the time. She and her husband chose to make it from wood and to build it over water – not on the island. When I asked her why, she told me that it would be better because it is easier to buang air (‘throw away’ [handle] water). For example, in a house like this, they would not have to build a separate toilet but could just integrate it into the house (see figure 73). The toilets in Boe Manes are usually small rooms over water with a little hole in the floor, which makes a flush unnecessary. In Erma and Nur’s house, the toilet is built on the island, one meter away from

37 the sea, and connected to the sea with a pipe, which means that they need to collect seawater to be able to flush it. The same procedure goes for the kitchen and cleaning the dishes. To Saldrin, more important than those practical aspects, however, were the historic ones. He said that when the stilt houses are gone, their culture will irrevocably be lost with them. In a similar account, Lenhart writes about how Orang Suku Laut, more or less voluntarily, give up or lose their ethnic identity in the context of “directed change” and sedentarization programmes instructed by the Indonesian state as well as in the context of competing spatial uses:

For those sedentary Orang Suku Laut who are ready for close interethnic contact and who accept assimilation, this might not be a severe problem in the near future. However, nomadic Orang Suku Laut still escape measures of directed change and remain a socially marginal minority group. As long as they still share a strong ethnic self-awareness, their position will not be very different as compared to what it is now. But possibilities of withdrawal will become fewer, due to the decrease in natural resources and in the possibilities of using ecological niches as a basis of their material and cultural existence. If escape is no longer possible, and they are forced into closer interethnic contact and confrontation with outside values, disparaging stereotypes and non-acceptance, this will lead them to question their own value system and self-esteem. Cultural estrangement will then afflict those nomads who “missed the boat”. (Lenhart 2002: 310)

With the charity money given to people in Boe Manes to build concrete houses, the national park as well as the admiration of Western ideals, I had the impression that Boe Manes is at a similarly critical point of transformation as the one Lenhart describes. People aimed for material wealth as they imagined it in Western countries and, most of them, did not seem to look critically at the consequences concrete houses might have.

The national park and territory The increasing role of the national park was welcomed by the majority because it is a source of money occasionally. For example, the national park initiates projects for which it recruits people from the village to do well paid work for a day. Saldrin, however, told me that he and other Sama in the region had a very critical view and feared the national park might, over time, displace them from their fishing grounds which he also linked to their cultural and ethnic existence. The important role that fishing grounds can have for identity is carved out by Chou for Orang Suku Laut:

The loss of their ancestral estates, through development programmes, theft or warfare, will ultimately diminish their ancestral identity and rights in addition to their social and political influence in the present. Such loss reveals a weakness in

their group’s identity and casts anxieties over their ability to survive in the present, let alone to carry on into the future. (Chou 2010: 77)

‘Running (off) to the reef’

Consequently, Saldrin told me that he is not willing to take down their stilt house. He further told me that in the case that they did have to take down their rumah papan (wooden house), they would leave the village and rebuilt it on the reef: lari ke ref (run to the reef) – something he considered anyway as he was unhappy with other developments in the village too and because fishing has become less fruitful.

Building as form of resistance Such a move would not only be an attempt to live in accordance with his values but would also have a high politic symbolism with building as a “performed expression” of critique and protest:

To build is a performed expression of the vision to stay and to live in the own lands, by the river – and, at the same time, it is the first step towards realizing this societally. But it also aims at making clear to the government and the dam administration that the Manasir cannot be moved out of their land by the flood. (Hänsch 2019: 174 about Sudanese farmers at risk of being internally displaced in the context of a huge Nil dam-project and their attempts to stay; translated from German)

That the provision of concrete houses by the government does not necessarily lead to people living in them permanently is also described by Lenhart:

Also, some of the houses that had been occupied by Orang Suku Laut in 1993 were empty, either because the people had left the location or because they used them only for storage and lived in newly built pile-dwellings offshore. (2008: 333)

Living on the reef would make things easier for both, Saldrin and Erma. Saldrin grew up in the region, living on boats until he was a teenager. Erma grew up in a village on a reef which does not exist anymore (see figure 74). After their marriage, they moved to Boe Manes because of the freshwater access. In their childhood, collecting water was a huge effort as they had to paddle long distances to reach freshwater springs and with the adaptation of engines which made daily trips to the reef possible, people had settled in villages14. But now, as the fish are

14 The impact of motorization on the spatial patterns also showed in a fishery on the east coast of Grenada in the West Indies. Among other things, the engines led to the extension of fishing grounds as they made it possible to travel faster, less dependent on the weather condition and consequently further in a single day (see Epple 1977: 181). While in this case, the engines increased mobility, in Boe Manes, because

39 getting fewer, the catch has become the bigger concern and as the fuel for the engine-driven boats is expensive, it seems more economically reasonable to live on the reef again and to use the boat for the more predictable, and therefore fewer, trips to collect freshwater. Although Saldrin told me about this intention many times and also Erma did occasionally, I think it is not very likely that they will make this move any time soon. Paul and Elo visit the primary school in Boe Manes and Devi is going to a high school in another village to which she travels together with other teenagers from Boe Manes so they can share a boat. Furthermore, they feel responsible for Erma’s old parents and her two teenage sisters. To conclude, I think that it is important, especially to Saldrin, to have the opportunity to move to the reef. This includes the economic feasibility as well as the political freedom to do so. Knowing that they still can, although it would already be extremely difficult, is why they are willing to stay in Boe Manes for now. Beside the financial effort as well as the social and political challenges, at least in terms of housebuilding, such a move would not be that difficult15.

Concrete houses, mobility and skill Mobility is an important aspect in the context of concrete houses. This does not only refer to the fact that the concrete houses are more physically fixed than wooden stilt houses, which can, as the planks can be rearranged according to temporal needs comparably easily, be taken down completely, be relocated (to the reef) and put up again there, but it also refers to a financial fix. Concrete is much more expensive in the region than wood. The financial support Saldrin and Erma received did not cover the full cost of the house; there is still a wall and parts of the roof missing as well as about half of the floor, which Saldrin needs to finance himself. To save money, he went to collect rocks from a neighbouring island and put them on the floor, so he needed to buy less cement. However, he still had to buy several bags and as a consequence to the heavy work, he suffered from severe back pain for about a week, hardly able to move. Beside the already difficult financial effort to buy the cement in the first place, this meant further financial loss as he could not go fishing and make money in the following week. As the daily profits usually only serve for the same day and sometimes the next, the inability to work

faster and more distant travel became possible, it led to settling-down. Thus, mobility in the sense of distance travelled in time increased, however, mobility in the sense of spatial and seasonal adaptations decreased. Sather also writes about the pattern changing role of engines: “[T]he use of engines, even on a limited scale, considerably reduced the time spent in travelling. By 1965, this time-saving was already beginning to change patterns of fishing activity, reducing the duration of voyaging, for many families.” (1997: 116) 15 See also: “These Orang Suku Laut dwellings are simple to construct and easy to move and are quite frequently transferred from place to place.” (Lenhart 2001: 72).

40 for a week means a considerable strain. Furthermore, in our conversations, Saldrin told me that because of the expensive concrete houses, which are also more expensive to be maintained, people could not afford bigger boats anymore (see figure 75-76). With small boats, however, some of the group fishing techniques are not possible, like the catching with big nets. Thus, according to him, people do not only forget how to build bigger boats, but they also unlearn fishing skills and consequently have fewer opportunities to make money while, at the same time, the costs of everyday life are rising. This evaluation of Saldrin shows that concrete houses must not only be seen in contrast to stilt houses, or in the context of (the materiality of) housing and residential mobility, but also in the context of financial costs16, and thus, in the context of (the affordability of) boats as the basis for (the practicability of) fishing techniques and other skills and therefore, within the broader socio-cultural organization.

Money and ‘headache’

Erma often talked about money in a whiny way. At first, I thought that she talked like this only to me, hoping that I would give them more money than I already had17. Although she probably did hope for more money, after a while, I realized that it was just the normal way of talking about it and that taking money is not a taboo, especially if it comes from distanced institutions or from close people. Furthermore, there were also situations when she wanted to give money to me:

Erma and Devi wanted to buy an Internet voucher for me yesterday. Maybe they thought that I don’t have money left, but I only want to ration it. … This shows me once more that it is common to present oneself as poor and in need of help but, the other way around, one also likes to help. Maybe this has to do with the constant “together”. (Field note, 14/04/2019)

After a while, I understood that when Erma told me about their financial problems, she indeed did this to share her worries with me, which put me under pressure, but – unlike I thought at

16 Similarly, the adaptation of outboard engines among Fanti fishermen in Ghana as well as the bigger boats and nets that came along with the engines increased the cost of buying and maintaining equipment. As a consequence, the fishermen became dependent on loans of market women. Women used to have the role of traders before the technological changes, however, due to the high-interest rates and the obligation to sell the entire catch to the subsequent market woman at a favourable price until the loan is fully payed back, the role of market women increased considerably while the significance between fishermen and their wives and sisters as an economic unit decreased (see Christensen 1977). 17 I paid my host families 1 million IDR (about 60 EUR) per month. This amount was suggested by a local from the region who helped me find the village and not requested by my host families themselves. As I estimate, this amount was slightly over the extra cost they had (rice, other foods, coffee, electricity, fuel) and taking me in was therefore neither a financial burden nor a noteworthy benefit.

41 first – this did not mean that she saw me as a foreign person with money but as a part of her family with the responsibility to help, if I can. I did feel responsible but I also knew that money was difficult to translate and that paying more than a little over the costs they had for taking me in would eventually separate us and build an unfortunate hierarchy, and thus decided to instead give away practical things that I had brought.

Services and salary While people speak openly about financial worries and their desire to own more money in loose context, it is not demanded when they offer services. For example, Erma and Saldrin both occasionally work in a tourist accommodation not far from Boe Manes. However, they told me that the owner, most of the time, does not pay the staff. They said that because they have to provide for their children, they could only do this job when they get paid but there were others who had worked there for almost a year without a salary. Although there are hardly any tourists and they can live in the premises, they still need to work to keep the place neat and to cook and accommodate tourists when there are any. Yet, they did not complain about not getting paid. Furthermore, despite Saldrin and Erma told me that they, in contrast to the other employees, would only work when they get paid, the question of what is considered as work remains. During the time that I lived with them, they occasionally went to this place with me and did some technical work in the premises or helped in the kitchen but did not request money for their services as they did not consider it as work that needs to be paid. Similarly, Saldrin did not demand to get paid when he helped in the village, whether it was informally for neighbours, like the building-up of house structures, or whether it was official, like in the context of the elections where he worked as a security officer for several days, keeping him from fishing.

Charity money Money, in the form of charity support, on the other hand, is asked for actively, as I have already mentioned in respect to houses. On another occasion, Erma went to demand supportive money for the school fees as many mothers in Boe Manes did. When she returned, she was happy and relieved as she had obtained 1.4 million IDR. Despite she had been telling me for weeks that she was worried about not receiving support for the school fees, the money was spent differently shortly after.

Financial losses Furthermore, there are financial losses. For example, one time after many lobsters died all at once as a consequence to heavy rain and, therefore, were not sellable, Erma, and especially

Saldrin, were clearly upset in the following two days. Erma told me in the morning that Saldrin had not slept during the night and that she was: “sakit kepala” (headache). This is something she said very often when she was worried about money and/or food. When Saldrin was worried, he sat quietly in a corner of the house or otherwise went fishing excessively, several times during day and night, until he made a good catch or was physically too exhausted to continue.

Money and food Worries about money and fishing are, obviously, strongly connected, however, while Nur’s work as a trader is not as dependent on single catches as he can buy from whoever got a good catch, for Saldrin, there is a big difference between good and bad days or weeks. Consequently, I could experience good and bad moods during the two months that I lived with them. While Ana and Nur basically crammed me with food and I was overstained with what I was supposed to eat as they welcomed me into their family18, I was hungry rather often when I lived with Erma and Saldrin. Most of the days, we ate only two meals and especially the time until the first meal, which was often eaten not before 11 am or even 1 pm, despite we got up at 7 am or earlier, was hard on me. Waiting for the second meal between 5 pm and 8 pm was also difficult at times and I was shy to eat as much as I would have liked as the food available was limited and the number of relatives coming from neighbouring houses to eat after us seemed unlimited and never determinable beforehand but decided by what was left, which also meant that, although I was always encouraged to eat, I felt like quite some food should be left and was inhibited to take a lot:

[T]his biophysical necessity [food] is so deeply linked to the social and emotional realm that feelings of hunger may be ignored or downplayed in situations in which different codes of conduct need to be acknowledged. (von Poser 2013: 9)

My hunger was never critical and probably more for vitamins than for calories, but it still influenced my mood and my ability to be active on my own initiative at times. As I was aware of it, I often referenced in my field notes when I was hungry and when I had eaten again. Despite this difficulty, I consider this experience important. Most certainly, I was not the only one who was hungry. My being noticeably sluggish, especially when I had no explicit activities to follow, is something that I also observed in others. It was normal to just lie around and wait. It is a part of everyday life (see figure 77-78), which I probably would not have been able to appreciate as a way of living within the general conditions but may have misinterpreted as laziness if I had not experienced it too. On the other hand, food also expressed good times and

18 See von Poser 2013 for the role of food in the processes of (re)establishing relationships.

43 good moods. After a good catch or when there had been other incomes, Erma often bought cake or cookies or prepared three meals with more variety instead of only two plain meals. Saldrin explained to me that in the past, people used to share19 a lot more. Similarly, Chou writes in the context of the introduction of money among Orang Suku Laut in Riau, that “the OSL find it easier to hide their money and avoid their obligation to share” (1994: 129). Furthermore, Saldrin told me that today, people sell most of their catch because they want money. He told me that they used to have less financial issues when he was young and fishing was more fruitful and rice was cheaper. However, now the value of fish is mainly seen as a monetary one and rather sold than eaten. Furthermore, Ana told me that fish is still shared but only if one cannot sell it.

Chapter conclusion In comparison to some Melanesian societies in which local currencies, mostly shell money, have long been a means of payment and where state money was often integrated into the existing ways of exchange and trade as an additional currency (see Akin & Robbins, eds. 1999), in Boe Manes, the Indonesian Rupiah and concepts of making money and consuming come into conflict with the historically strong societal emphasis on sharing and helping in the form of “generalized reciprocity” (Sahlins 1972), which needs to be seen as an “economy of sharing” rather than an “economy of gift [exchange]” (Spittler 2016: 153; translated from German). However, whereas in the past people used to share the catch, people now sell most of it and only share the leftovers. This, as rice and life in general have become more expensive, consequently resolves in a destabilizing circle: (1) The catch is getting smaller and less predictable, (2) more of the already smaller catch is sold, thus even less of it is shared while (3) people depend on sharing even more as, beside the smaller catches, the financial efforts to pay for housing, rice and other foods as well as for fuel have risen. Therefore, while Chou focuses on inter-community exchanges and concludes that:

[t]he use of money in Riau has [] enabled the OSL and Malays to circulate things and services across their group boundaries (ibid: 141) … because greater social distance is added between the transactors through such a form of exchange (ibid:

19 Sather writes about the food sharing obligations among Bajau Laut in Semporna: “Before fish is sold, food-sharing obligations must generally be met. Called binuanan daing, their fulfilment takes the form of gifts of ‘cooking fish’. These are distributed, not by the fishermen themselves, but by their wives. Food sharing is thus channelled by women and takes place primarily between related married women living in the same and neighbouring house groups. These gifts reinforce the matrilateral skewing of relations within these groups. Through the sharing of fish, each family is enmeshed in a wider network of distributive obligations.” (1997: 182)

167) … [and therefore, the] use of money has [] allowed the different groups to interact and transact on an equal basis” (ibid: 168), in Boe Manes, I found that the trade that comes with money is challenging people’s sense of mutuality and togetherness that, as I will explain in the next chapter, are central to their identity. Consequently, for people involved in fishing as the main source of income, money and concrete houses have had rather destabilizing and displacing than stabilizing and emplacing effects.

Chapter III: Reassuring mutuality

In this chapter, I will look more deeply into social aspects, mainly the concept of bersama (together(ness)) and how it is challenged by the (de)stabilizing effects of money and concrete houses. Again, I draw from my insights as participant observer as an ‘add-on’ family member, including informal conversations, but I will also draw from my experiences as an ‘add-in’ teacher and the experiences I made with photo-voice. Therefore, like the chapter before, this chapter comprises observations I made during the active, more explicit activities as well as during ‘waiting’ for time to go by. However, now I will focus more strongly on the implicit social aspects rather than the explicit material aspects which, nonetheless, go hand in hand. I will show how people rely on and are focussing on the group rather than on themselves as individuals and how material transformations make this commonality a relief for some while for others, it becomes a burden.

‘Scared alone’

When I spent time with children a phrase that I heard over again was “takut sendirian” (scared alone). For example, I heard it when I taught in school. It was said in the context of doing something by themselves and not in the context of being somewhere alone, which one hardly ever is. In my first attempts to teach, I wanted the children to introduce themselves after I had demonstrated how to do it. Although they had understood the concept, they basically fell silent when it was their turn:

Yesterday, I taught class 4. Like the day before, I was picked up by children. The class was difficult to teach initially. The children were very shy at first. When I spoke together with them, it got better. Playing memory [together in English] was especially helpful and teaching eventually went well. (Field note, 13/02/2019)

However, the same children did not appear shy to me at all when I was not focussing on them individually but instead addressing them as a class (see figure 79). In fact, I could hardly speak loud enough to make myself heard, as when I read out words that I had written on the board to demonstrate the pronunciation, they usually started to loudly scream the words with me already instead of speaking after me in a low volume. I also observed discomfort in adults when they were left to rely on themselves. This, for example, showed when Nur had left for a couple of days to go to his mother’s funeral who had

46 passed away unexpectedly. During the time that Nur was away, Ana appeared timid to me and let herself go and also took less care of the household. During the nights, she was scared and made sure that the doors and windows were locked. The moment she heard the sound of the engine of their boat, which she could tell apart, she ran to the door and when she saw Nur returning, she was relieved and brightened up again.

Not doing things alone as methodological limit/key The ‘fear’ to do things alone or to speak for oneself was difficult concerning some of my methods. Besides interviews, which were not an efficient way to have a conversation in most cases, it was also difficult to get people to take photos for me. The children were very excited to take pictures when I gave them the cameras with no instructions at all and simply took them along in their play. When I gave the cameras to specific children with instructions, despite they were not strict, only a few children were interested. In the following photo-voice interviews they hardly spoke and left it to me to come up with yes and no questions. Therefore, I asked them to take videos for me, in which they explain things together with their friends while filming, which worked better. Besides the fact that I had to seek for agency in the group rather than in individuals, I also learned that I needed to look for moving dimensions rather than for relating perspectives, as explained in the introduction, and, furthermore, that I had to approach immediacy rather than reflection. Among the adults, it was also difficult to work with photo- voice, especially with men. However, I think this was not because the men were too shy to take pictures. They assumed that I wanted them to take pictures of their work, which is carried out over- and underwater using both hands and therefore would have been difficult for them to do practically. I told them that they could also take pictures in the village but as they did not, I believe that they felt it was the responsibility, or the sphere of competence, of women. Although the village/Boe Manes and the sea/boe aseng and the activities therein physically, economically and socially overlap, there is still an analogy to a female and a male sphere20, like the work activities I described in chapter one show; and most of the obligations of women take place within the village and those of men outside of it. Among the women, I asked Erma and Fi, who

20 While I observed task areas with lose boundaries Chou observed even more liberality among Orang Suku Laut: “In their work and other daily activities, there are no demarcations of male and female spaces.” (Chou 2010: 139). However, she also points out how the Indonesian state interfered with it: “The Orang Laut are pressured to demarcate all things pertaining to being out at sea (e.g. boats and fishing gear) as falling within the domain of men. They are likewise pressured to demarcate all things pertaining to the land-based house and the responsibilities of maintaining it as falling within the domain of the women.” (ibid: 140). As her research was carried out in the 1990s, it may be that the region where I researched has been under similar influences in the process of Indonesian nation-building and modernisation efforts and gone through gender role transformations accordingly.

47 took many pictures for me. They also did not have much to tell me about them, but they were not as shy as the children when we looked at the photos together afterwards.

Self-reliance Yet, I generally had the impression that people were not very self-reliant. They often complained about things they were not happy with, mostly concerning money or material matters, but did not take charge of it – or at least I thought so for a while. For example, Erma’s seventeen-year-old sister told me several times that she wanted a smartphone; that all her friends had one, and that she would never have one. She got paid for washing the laundry for Erma sometimes and saving up that money, she could have afforded a phone within a couple of months, but she never even made that calculation. I asked her what she spends the money on, and she said that her younger sister asks her for money to buy sweets. I understood that she had to share her money, but I still did not understand why she did not even consider financing a phone by herself. The effort that she made instead was to let people know that she wants to have one. She just kept saying: “Harus menunggu.” (Have to wait.), like I had heard other people say all the time too in comparable situations and I was astonished by the naturalness with which people were waiting for things to change on their own terms. Chou links a decrease in self-reliance among Orang Laut to charity:

Where previously the Orang Laut had to cultivate their own skills to find the necessary raw materials or to rely on their own means to provide for themselves, they are now increasingly expecting others to provide them with necessary supplies of food, clothes and wooden planks. Calculated conformity by the Orang Laut may have been clever in obtaining these things which would have to be earned otherwise, but it has also whittled away their sense of self-reliance and bred a new dependence on others. (2010: 103)

I agree with her in so far as I think that the ways in which the charity money is expected and taken, make the low self-reliance very visible and furthermore reinforce the low self-reliance and create dependencies on the state when, at the same time, skills necessary for independence are being unlearned and forgotten about. However, unlike Chou, I do not think that charity money is the reason for the low self-reliance in the first place but rather the unpredictability in fishing and the following concept of good and bad luck rather than self-attribution, as I have mentioned in chapter one and which I will come back to in chapter four.

Privacy Besides self-reliance, privacy was also different from what I knew. Basically, I was accompanied by someone in everything I did. When I sat by myself, whether it was in one of

48 the families’ houses or somewhere else in the village, people would sit down next to me. For example, one time when I sat on the terrace in the stilt house just to relax, Erma’s youngest sister came to me and asked me whether I was sad. I explained to her that I was not and that it was normal for me to spend some time alone. On another occasion, after Nur had spent some time by himself, he explained to me that he was not angry. I had not even considered it, but he obviously assumed that I might think he was angry because he had spent time alone, which made me realize that it is not common and that people need an explanation for it or they will see it negatively, even if is only for as short as five minutes.

Competition I recognized support rather than competition when people played volleyball or other team sports in the evenings (see figure 80). The teams tried to win, but the ways the teams were formed was not about recruiting the best players. Whoever was around, was encouraged to play, no matter what age or gender and they seemed to have just as much fun losing as winning. I am clearly not saying that they had no passion for playing or that they were not good at it. What I think animated them, however, was the shared activity coupled with the chance to win – or lose – and the excitement that comes with it. Likewise, children initially played the memory game that I had brought from Germany with a strategy that was a mix of mutual support and luck. The individual children were waiting until it was their turn to flip a card over, but the decision was made in the group. When a pair was found, everybody clapped and the child whose turn it was kept the cards. Although after weeks into my research, I recognized a trend towards competition when the children sometimes gave wrong advice on purpose, in general, triumph was still experienced when they found the pairs quick (as a group) rather than when they had achieved more pairs than the other players (see figure 81):

Opening the cards seemed to be done in a manner hoping for luck rather than following their memories, which may have to do with the general spontaneity in life here. Also, advice was given; sometimes correctly and sometimes purposely wrong. … This time, they also counted their cards. … Yet, all in all, it was the ‘together’, the immediate and the luck-oriented that prevailed. (Field note, 17/03/2019)

Similarly, a few days after I had arrived, the kepala desa and a few other people were taking their turns in singing along with the karaoke function of a keyboard. The quality of the loudspeaker was bad and not everybody was good at singing, but it did not matter. The attendants were cheering and enjoying the activity and the efforts the singers made:

The kepala desa sang “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”. He wasn’t very good but very enthusiastic. I think he enjoys singing a lot. Afterwards, others took their

turn. The speakers were way too loud and the bass too strong, the acoustic bad. But it didn’t seem to matter, just as it didn’t matter if one could sing or not. (Field note, 13/02/2019)

Yet another example is when people were taking photos after a prize-giving. Everyone was invited into the photos and the trophies were giving around so that everybody could hold one while it did not seem to matter at all who had won them (see figure 82). When I noticed that money was handled similarly, I started to realize the significance of this severe togetherness (see figure 83-84).

‘Together con(si)stently’

The expressions seperti keluarga (like family) and bersama terus, which translates to ‘together continuously/constantly’ and as a verb, terus, also means ‘to carry on’, I heard mainly when people talked about people that are important to them. For example, Saldrin referred to the few men who, like him, still go diving at night as “seperti keluarga – bersama terus”. As he does not spend much time with them effectively, I understand terus not necessarily on a spatial- temporal level but on an emotionally existential one and think that bersama terus can also be translated as ‘together consistently’. Especially the fact that they share the dangerous and uncertain activity of underwater searching as well as that they are among the few people left with the knowledge and the skills to do it, bonds them. Even if they do not necessarily work at the same time at the same place, knowing that they make the experience and have the same responsibility on a material and also a political level is encouraging them. Bersama terus, then, as I understand it, means that only ‘together’ they can ‘exist’ and ‘continue’ into the future. This can be but is not necessarily congruent with biological or in-law kin groups:

Frequent occasions exist for non-kin to meet, and strong friendships regularly develop between village age-mates whether these persons are related or not. Such friendships typically begin in childhood and usually last throughout adult life. … The ideal friend is like a close relative in the sense that his support can always be counted on. But friends are allies by choice. In this sense, friendship is as important between kin as it is between unrelated persons. Consequently, when men are both friends and kinsmen, they tend to stress their friendship first, as a way of emphasizing the genuineness of their concern and personal regard for one another. (Sather 1997: 215ff)

While the familial bonds I observed were, though mainly friendly, rather compulsive in nature, what I look at here are groups bonded by shared stances and positions within society. These

50 become especially important in times of transformations, for example, concerning matters like the concrete houses, money and price fixes or the questionable work of the national park.

‘Here it is not together’

Not long into my research, I started to notice some kind of tension in the village. I was not sure whether it was a bigger general conflict – two diverging sides to each end of the village – if it was some kind of jealousy when I spend time with different people or if it was solely my subjective experience as I was not used to being monitored permanently. As Erma and Saldrin were living at the other end of the village, I had to walk down the whole village road and pass by dozens of people who all asked me where I was going to or coming from on each trip when I still lived with Ana and Nur. Besides the different atmospheres that I noticed, Erma told me several times that they have nothing to do with Ana and Nur, who are not family, and that the people disana (there) are berbeda (different); that they like to be alone and that they do not talk when visitors come and that everyone who moves to Boe Manes favours their side. She explained these differences by the fact that they only go fishing during the day and usually no more than once a day for one hour and that they do not have the skills that the people on their side have. Ana and Nur were as sceptical when they talked about the respectively other side of the village, for example, that Erma cannot fish and that people do not have much food while pointing out that on their side, when people do not have fish, they help. I think these differences originate from different biographies. Ana’s family has lived in Boe Manes for the eighty years the village has existed, and Nur moved there to marry her about twenty years ago. Erma’s family, as I have explained, used to live in a village on a reef which does not exist anymore and Saldrin lived on a boat for the first eight years of his life. They moved to Boe Manes together as a young couple and their families live in Boe Manes and other villages in the area. Their neighbours who are not family still have similar biographies which makes me think that the bipolarity of the village must have to do with its phases of settling. Yet, I do not have enough insight to be sure of this. What I want to point out here is that the village should not be seen as one homogenous group. Especially the transformations that I have discussed in chapter two weaken the social stability regarding the village as a community. Another matter in this context is that fish is being sold extremely cheap. When I asked Saldrin why he does not request more money for it he replied that he cannot do this alone. I then asked him why they do not make this request together and he said: “Disini tidak bersama.” (here it is not together) and that he does not like to live in the village anymore. He was not

51 always this pessimistic but when he thought about recent developments and looked back at the time ten to twenty years ago, he said: “Satu Bahasa, satu suku, tapi budaya sudah lupa.” (one language, one tribe/ethnic background but the culture is already forgotten/lost). He explained to me that in the past, it was normal to help out Sama; that if people arrived from other villages, one would offer them food, coffee and a place to sleep. Nowadays, he said, not everyone does that anymore and that there are some bad villages. Ana and Nur said the same about other villages, like T which I wrote about in chapter two. I mention this here because when Saldrin talked about the developments that he was unhappy with, he said that he cannot do anything against it by himself. Here, the fact that people take strength from togetherness brings powerlessness when they are alone in their stance.

‘We think (about it) together’

Yet, the strong mutual support prevails the frictions when it comes down to it. This became especially clear in the days before I left. There were some problems with how I could leave as the ferry that I wanted to take from W to Sulawesi would not run for a month. This meant that I would have to travel a different way, taking a long bus ride and a plane. I was worried about the expense and as I had no Internet access, I had no opportunity to book a flight or to check schedules and prices.

Sharing worries When Erma and a neighbour saw me worried, they said: “Tidak usah pikir sekarang. Kita pikir bersama nanti.” (There is no need to think now. We will think together later.). Later, we sat together with several people in the kitchen who had asked different people with different connections about the possibilities that I have. They did not leave me alone with my problem and even wanted to help me out financially. What I did not know was that a neighbour went to collect money for me. When I found out about it, I was extremely uncomfortable and also a bit angry as it created a difficult situation for my host family too. They recommended me to take the money so that they could make sure that it is given back to the families without them being insecure why I did not want their help. Although this was a difficult incident, it showed that support is of high relevance. As Ana and Nur took care of explaining the matter on their end of the village, it also showed that the differences between the two sides of the village or between the two families had no priority in this situation. Surely, it needs to be considered that I was part of both families and of both sides of the village to some extent which meant that they all felt responsible. Yet, they could have used the circumstances to talk badly about each other, to

52 spread rumours and try to prove to be ‘the better part’ but did not do so. What mattered here, to both my families and the other people in the village, was to secure that I get to the airport, whether this requires information or financial support and, most importantly, that I do not worry about it, or if I do, at least not alone. Thus, the problem became a communal matter, not only regarding me, not worrying alone, but also regarding the different people in the village, making mutual efforts. However, while confrontations of underlying differences in the village are usually avoided and, in the context of specific situations in which people share mutual goals, are bridged, the continuous bridging of differences within families in combination with the changes described in the previous chapter can be a strain.

Worrying shares Following the earthquake, Saldrin told me that he did not know what to do. Searching for octopus and lobster was not fruitful as many people had been looking for them in the days before. He told me that he needed to wait until their population on the reef regenerated. But catching fish was also not fruitful because the fish did not come up to the shallows as a consequence to the earthquake. He was especially worried as Ramadan was coming, which meant that he did not only need to provide for the immediate needs but also prepare for a month in which he cannot work. Despite this pressure, Erma’s parents, two young sisters and her brother and his wife entered their house every day and took coffee and sugar and joined in for at least one meal. Erma, in this context, told me that she would like to cook a lot of rice but that it is difficult because she does not have much money to buy rice, but also, that her mother and siblings need to eat. To me, the extent to which people entered the house to eat appeared like a self-service restaurant or a bottomless pit. I understood that people have a lot of responsibility for their families and that helping each other is of high value but I also had the impression that the responsibility and help were very unbalanced. When I lived with Ana, who is also the oldest among her siblings and whose mother is also elderly, she only occasionally cooked for this part of her family. One of her younger sisters often joined for dinner but brought her own rice with her. Erma’s family sometimes brought an uncooked fish, but this was not comparable to the amounts of coffee and rice they took, and I had the impression that they acted more helplessly than they were on purpose to work less. I was unsure if my interpretation was too negative but towards the end of my stay, I found that Saldrin felt that way too. In a conversation with him, I said cautiously that Erma’s family is eating a lot with them, and he seemed somewhat relieved that I brought up the topic. He

53 asked me whether I had already noticed it and told me that he cannot say anything against it as then they, and Erma as well, would get angry –

Households and individuals may not always be so willing to share and help, but the obligation to do so weighs heavily upon them. This is because these acts are representations of ideal behaviour that imply egalitarian status and generosity between fellow community members. They will be gossiped about, criticised as selfish, ostracized, labelled ‘outsiders’ and eventually edged out of the network. Networks of helping and sharing are therefore established, maintained and continuously renewed. In this manner, social relationships are strengthened so that individuals and households in the village community will assist each other in times of need. Such need could also include winning the support of others to promote one’s viewpoint or status in matters concerning village politics or having reliable allies when serious conflicts arise. (Chou 2010: 99ff)

– but that the way they behave is not okay; that his house is like a hotel and although he likes to help, when they see that it is already difficult, it is not okay to take as much as they do and that he is forced to go fishing every day even when he is in severe physical pain while they “istrahat terus” (constantly take a break). He said again that if things get too bad, he will take his family and lari ke ref. In this context, moving to the reef is not only a solution to and a critique of the difficult economic/fishing situation and the cultural loss I have explained in the chapter before but also a way to escape from social problems that have arisen from the tension between money as a necessity in a globalizing capitalist world on the one hand and support in the form of generalized reciprocity/reassuring mutuality as a responsibility in the specific cultural context on the other. The symptom of a ‘headache’ that Erma often articulated may then also be seen as a metaphor for two conflicting ways of thinking: self-centred and group- centred.

Chapter conclusion The fact that people hardly spend time by themselves was evident to me from the start. I experienced it as a loss of privacy most of the time and it was difficult for me to deal with. However, the longer I had stayed in Boe Manes, the more I got used to it. I started to understand that not to be self-reliant, or more accurately, not to be self-centred, is deeply socially rooted and essential to the socio-cultural organization. Looking at people’s history, this is not surprising. If one literally sits together in the same boat, not only for hours but for weeks and months and shares a space of about 5 sq. m while moving across the sea in the exact same ways together, it is not surprising that people are not as self-centred as people who walk as a means of movement and thus relate to different people and places individually. Even if people socio-

54 economically are just as inter-dependent, in the latter case, by walking, people situationally establish individual relations with different people and distance from others throughout the day. If, however, one always moves in the group on a boat, therefore the group instead of the own body being the smallest physical unit most of the time, and the decisions made to situationally take directions affect everyone collectively, it is not surprising that people ‘think together’, are ‘scared alone’ and rather than to relate to each other, ‘consist together’. Now, people in Boe Manes do not live on boats anymore. Nonetheless, it is only a few decades ago that they have. Besides in stories, this still is evident in the bodies of middle-aged and older people, which have grown into the posture that is taken when sitting still in a boat and, some of them, are hardly able to stand, walk or sit in a chair. Furthermore, the village is small. Living on boats together, and also living in such a dense village, makes sharing existential and keeping things to oneself pointless. Thus, there no point in competition as one is not competing with others but rather adding one’s strength into the group’s mutual share of knowledge, ability and achievement. While this may indeed be a general characteristic of economies of sharing (see chapter two), I believe that the yet unforgotten ethno-biography of living in boats and the consequent physical experience of moving together adds an intensifying quality to ‘togetherness’ that is unique to ‘sea nomads’. For some, this is a relief and reassuring to be part of that mutuality while for others, it means pressure to reassure it. Reassuring mutuality, therefore, does not mean that everyone is uniform, but everyone is inseparably part of that mutuality in different ways.

Chapter IV: Meaning-making ocean

In this chapter, I will bring together the observations, experiences and interpretations I have presented in the former chapters and analyse already presented insights more deeply by looking at the entanglings of practical, environmental, material, economic and social dimensions of everyday life, which cannot be broken-down to detached categories. Thereby, I will show how the notion of mudah-mudahan (hopefully), comprising of tunggu (waiting/patience), beruntung (luck) and membantu (helping/support), evolves as an underlying motive and guides through/makes life in Boe Manes. In subsequent steps, I will conclude what tinggal diatas laut (living over the sea) means and how this is experienced, though differently, only together.

‘Hopefully, …’ or patience, luck and support as guiding motive

Looking at the previous chapters, it becomes clear that a certain level of unpredictability prevails life concerning, for example, the weather, the catch and the financial situation. By unpredictability, however, I do not mean uncertainty, which is defined as an “open-ended field of unpredicted possibilities” (Boholm 2003: 167) and where future developments are not at all anticipatable. Nevertheless, the related concept of risk, which, in contrast to uncertainty, is defined as a “bounded set of possible consequences” (ibid), does not fit well either as risk, in the social sciences, is often thought in the context of crises, which are situations in which ‘normalcy’ is at-risk and management strategies are put at test (Macamo & Neubert 2012: 85). Risk, then, is linked to an event, for example, caused by an unpredictable hazard (Bollig 2012: 35) or an action which possibly could but does not necessarily have to (Haltermann 2012: 63) damage something that is of value to people, including their lives (Rosa 1998: 28). In Boe Manes, however, a certain level of unpredictability is an ordinary part of everyday life and not problematic as such, although, of course, there are difficult times and situations. Yet, rather than to “routinize crisis” (Vigh 2006: 151), people live over a “choppy sea” (ibid: 165), not only in a metaphoric way, but as the unpredictable, yet mostly trusted and routinized order of the everyday. Beside misinterpreting this unpredictability as crises, the way people live in accordance with circumstances in which it is hardly possible to plan ahead in detail, can also easily be mistaken for a lack of self-reliance and disinterest in the future by ‘outsiders’, as the outside- views Lenhart collected about Orang Suku Laut show:

According to the most extreme items mentioned, the Orang Suku Laut are … a backward, ignorant and pitiful ethnic group, take each day as it comes and show no concern for the future. (1997: 591)

As I have explained, it also took me a while to understand why the people I was getting to know spent so much time ‘waiting’, which appeared like doing nothing to me at first. For example, I wrote:

Erma said again: “Kalau ada waktu. Kami tunggu.” (When there is time/the time is right. We wait.) I wonder what it is they are waiting for. (Field note, 27/03/2019)

I also wrote: Here one waits for everything, and I can’t fight it. (Field note, 19/04/2019), when I was worried that I might not obtain enough data, until I realized that the waiting, or the patience of people, was relevant data itself. Consequently, I had difficulties to understand why people wait for things to happen instead of working towards them as I have described by the example of Su’s wish to own a smartphone and which, despite she was making money, did not even consider saving for. I found a similar attitude concerning various other material aspects. Especially in all sorts of fishing activities that I either accompanied or that I was involved in in the form of preceding or subsequent conversations, the good or bad catch was anticipated or interpreted as either beruntung (lucky) or tidak beruntung (not lucky). Therefore, people did not think in terms of ‘success’ or ‘failure’ and the outcome was hardly connected to the own merit (see also Schneider 2012: 17, quoted in chapter one) but to circumstances one cannot influence; like fish that do not want to come up as a reaction to earthquakes or a too deep bottom so the fish can escape beneath the net. What was seen as own ability, however, was the variety of skills one has. For example, Saldrin and Erma explained to me proudly that Saldrin knows many different ways of fishing and that, if searching octopus (during the day) is without an outcome, he can still search for lobsters and sea cucumbers (during the night) or go net fishing with his family and that not many people have such a variety of skills. This notion of luck is strongly connected to waiting as, if one is not lucky, one needs to be patient until the time is better again. Another aspect that relates to waiting and luck is membantu (helping). If the conditions are not good, one does not only need to wait alone until things become better but can trust on help from those in a better situation at that moment or, if one is doing well and others struggle, it is the own turn to help. Similarly, Sather connects the role of help to the unpredictability of fishing:

Some, such as the expenses entailed by a son’s marriage or by a long-term family illness may, in the short-run, be beyond the ability of a single family to meet from its own resources. At such times, village house group members and other kin are likely to be turned to. In this way, the family is again linked to a wider web of economic relationships. Receiving aid creates future obligations of return. The resulting transactions of debt and credit dominate the village economy and are closely bound up with the nature of fishing, in which income is received in relatively small, but variable amounts, at times surpassing family needs, at other times barely covering its subsistence requirements. The existence of this wider system of economic relations, linking village families to one another, complements the relative independence of the family in day-to-day fishing, and so forms a vital element in the larger social and economic life of the community. (1997: 132)

However, in Boe Manes, I found that this help does not necessarily have to be evened out among people over time but instead, that it rather continuously evens a group, as I have shown in chapter three. The focus, therefore, is not on different inputs that different people make, emphasising difference, but instead, on what adds up among them, emphasizing entity. After a while, I realised that these three aspects: waiting, luck and helping, are all part of the same, yet manifold concept and could be summarised by the expression ‘mudah- mudahan…’ (hopefully…), which is used very frequently to start a sentence. For example, it is used when the weather is bad and one hopes that soon the weather will be good enough so that fishing or trading is possible again. In this case, it relates to tunggu. Waiting, then, is trustful anticipation rather than passive despair. It does not only apply to short term concerns like the next fishing trip but also to long term concerns like Saldrin’s hope to move back to the reef within the next couple of years. Even if actions to implement that hope are not necessarily visible it does not mean that there are none:

A temporality of waiting is based on the reciprocal relationship between imaginations of the future and the experience of waiting in the present. It is an experience of time in which engagement with the present is shaped by visions of the future. The present is characterized by feelings of stuckedness, boredom and doing nothing as one’s energy is focused on possible futures. These feelings do not, however, imply that one literally does nothing. As one waits, incremental and unstable day-to-day practices are simultaneous with the maintenance of a broader vision for the future. (Stasik & Hänsch et al. 2020: 2)

As I have written in chapter two, knowing that it is still possible to move to the reef is what makes it acceptable for Saldrin to remain in Boe Manes. Therefore, to sustain a life in Boe Manes that keeps up the possibility of moving to the reef, even if no direct actions are taken, still is an action towards fulfilling that wish in the future while it also takes other, more urgent conditions into account, like the education of his children and the support of Erma’s elderly parents and her young siblings. The future vision is then brought into and kept in the present

58 by regularly expressing: “Mudah-mudahan, tahun depan sudah…” (Hopefully, next year already…). Even if everybody knows that it is very unlikely that it is going to happen this soon, nonetheless, everybody knows that it is still being anticipated. Therefore, patience in the context of hoping is a combination of something in the future that one wants and waits for, and something that is not entirely within one’s control. Consequently, mudah-mudahan is also used to express, for example, the hope for a good catch and then relates to beruntung. Here again, it refers to something that one wants, however, unlike tunggu, it is not the aspect of time that is stressed here but the limited control that one has over it. Finally, mudah-mudahan is used to express the desire to be able to help or the longing for receiving help in difficult times: membantu. Yet, these aspects are all mixed up and part of one concept as if one is unlucky, one needs to be patient and possibly rely on help while if one is lucky, one needs to help others who are waiting unluckily. Therefore, it is luck, or unpredictability, within the concept of mudah- mudahan which is central to it, as if one knew the outcome beforehand, one might still need to be patient or have to help/need help but there would be no point to hope for what is already definite. The notion of beruntung and tidak beruntung as opposed to, for example, the notion of ‘success’ and ‘failure’, therefore is a recognition and acceptance of a general level of unpredictability and a limited direct influenceability of certain matters and should not be mistaken for a withdrawal from agency or responsibility, although this is a consequence in some cases. Furthermore, the unpredictability does not mean that everything is unknown or beyond one’s control. While it is not known what the weather will be like or how fruitful a fishing trip is going to be, it can still be trusted that people will help each other and that, at some point or another, there will be good weather and fishing will be fruitful again. Therefore, what is uncertain is rather when things will happen in which one of the known possible ways and not so much what will happen at all, which again proves that the concepts of uncertainty, risk and crisis do not fit here but instead that of hope. Hope, nonetheless, should not be seen in a solely positive light. First of all, it is necessary to understand that “hopes have two sides: hopes for the good and fear of the bad” (van Hooft 2014: 58). Yet, wording it this way, hopes would be both, the scope between the possible but uncertain outcomes as well as the positively evaluated end to it, which seems somewhat contradictory. While von Hooft takes the inevitability of worries within hope into account, he yet sees hope as an ‘answer’ for worry, or at least as the optimistic end to it. As worry is always implicit in mudah-mudahan, I prefer to describe hope as the field between the

59 imaginable outcomes that one fears/tries to prevent and those that one wishes for/aims at. One could also argue that, vice versa, hope is always implicit in worry as, here too, if it were already certain that the outcome is bad, worry would not make sense but, for example, regret. With such a perspective, it makes sense to treat hope as the positive end:

Hopefulness is not just a sunny disposition. It is the positive side of a host of deep concerns and anxieties. The hopeful person is the one who stresses the positive side while the less hopeful person is preoccupied with the anxieties. Hopefulness is an unarticulated but reasonable way of being in which we acknowledge the precariousness of our projects and the vulnerability of our existence and yet commit ourselves joyfully to the living of our lives. (ibid: 64ff)

Nonetheless, hoping in Boe Manes comprises of a field of meanings between positive and negative ends. It can mean a trustful and creative attitude in a difficult time, but it can also mean a worrying and restricting attitude in a good, yet prone time that could turn easily. Therefore, while mudah-mudahan definitely can be a positive anticipation of the future, it can also be the opposite. It does not always express that someone is hopeful as in ‘trusting in the good’ but can be used as an accepted way to, in fact, express worries or critique. For example, if someone says: “Hopefully, the weather will be good” what it sometimes actually meant is: “I am worried – more than I usually am – that the weather will not be good.” or if someone says: “Hopefully, they will be lucky fishing” it may actually mean: “They are taking too much food from us.” like Saldrin told me openly in a private conversation as shown in chapter three. Furthermore, it can then also be a way to ask for help indirectly and in that way, instead of comforting others by ‘hoping’ as a positive attitude, put pressure on them by suggesting that one needs help as Van Hooft also recognises:

In hope, one recognizes the limitations of what one can achieve by oneself and so makes an appeal to something beyond oneself. (ibid: 37) … Very often when we hope for something we send out an implicit or explicit appeal to someone else to help us achieve what we hope for. (ibid: 39)

The contrast between Erma’s parent’s and Saldrin’s efforts to provide made this very clear. This shows that ‘hoping’ as a combination of being patient and supporting in the face of unpredictability can do both, enhance or reduce responsibility and consequently feel like a burden or a relief, depending on whether one contributes actively or passively into the group – whether one reassures mutuality or is reassured mutuality. Yet, in either way, hoping is a way to anticipate the future:

[I]t is interesting to note that planning is similar to hope in that it is directed towards the future and what is possible but contingent. Moreover, it is motivated

by a desire for success and, sometimes, by anxiety about failure. Yet it differs from hope in that it is an attempt to control the circumstances of one’s action and the means at one’s disposal so as to ensure a successful outcome, while hope becomes relevant when we recognize that our control has limits. It is when we see that, despite our planning and preparation, success is not certain that we find ourselves hoping for it. (van Hooft 2014: 32ff)

Thus, it is not surprising that in Boe Manes, where planning in detail is not possible, hoping prevails. Van Hooft differentiates between ‘hopes’, as hopes for something and intentional psychological states (ibid: 48) and ‘hopefulness’ as a general mood or attitude towards the world and life (ibid: 49), which he does not understand “as a set of hopes directed upon specific outcomes” but as a way to “apprehend[] the whole world and everything that happens in it” and hence comprehends hopefulness as “a character trait that marks a person’s way of being for significant lengths of time” (ibid: 50). With mudah-mudahan, I think it is the combination of the two. On the one hand, when saying: “Hopefully, …” it is always attached to something specific and, therefore, expresses explicit hopes. On the other hand, (spoken and acted) it implicitly expresses a general attitude towards life in which planning is only possible to a limited extent and assurance needs to be drawn from other resources and, therefore, does not only cover a trustful attitude but also a worrying or requesting one. Van Hooft further defines hope as both cognitive and emotional:

While there is probably some cognitive aspect to most emotions, … hope is not an emotion in any simple or purely reactive manner. It involves a relatively high degree of understanding of the world intermingled with the concerns and desires that we have. If placing hope into the broader category of wishes suggested that it was an emotion, we should now modify that suggestion by adding that it also involves knowledge, belief and understanding. This, in turn, suggests that the distinction philosophers are fond of making between cognitive states such as belief and knowledge on the one hand, and emotional or motivational states such as desires and wishes on the other, is not as sharp as traditional thinking would suggest. (ibid: 40ff)

This correspondence of the evaluation of what is possible or realistic and, within that, what one wishes for/aims at and is worried about/tries to prevent is not only important to understand hoping as a concept, but it makes it also extremely interesting as an approach to understanding societies and people and could be a useful tool in anthropologic research in general. However, unlike van Hooft who states that: “One is hopeful for the future despite the past rather than because of it.” (ibid: 51), I think that mudah-mudahan is based on past experiences: No matter how badly (and also how well) things go, people in Boe Manes know they will change

61 eventually21. It is the past experience of both worry (followed by relief) and comfort (followed by worry) which constitutes mudah-mudahan and which, as an underlying motive guides people through the present. Accordingly, it was received positively when I started using the phrase. When I said something starting with mudah-mudahan, whether worry or good moods were prevailing, it often was approvingly repeated after me by the people I was with and I felt like I had figured out what to say in what moment. I use the term motive22 here to avoid separating between emotion23 and reason24 as I agree with van Hooft that such a distinction cannot be a sharp one (see previous page). Furthermore, while mudah-mudahan, like affect25, is in constant motion, unlike affect, the processes I have observed in Boe Manes appeared to me (intra-)spheric rather than (inter- )relational as well as conserving rather than releasing in nature. Thus, instead of affect as “felt difference” (SFB 1171 Affective Societies 2016: 4 for affect), I understand motive (mudah- mudahan) as differently experienced mutuality. To give one example:

When Saldrin’s catch is unlucky several times in a row or if there is strong West wind for a while, so he has to wait until he can go to the reef, it means that he cannot make a lot of money to buy rice. This also means that Erma has headaches [‘sakit kepala’] because she is worried that she cannot cook enough rice for her children, parents and young siblings and that Saldrin feels pressured to return to the reef [‘ke ref’] despite exhaustion and possible danger, while the young and old members of Erma’s family feel free to take

21 Somewhat similar to mudah-mudahan is the notion of nabâsir. While, on the one hand, it is a concept of agricultural “patchwork” (“zusammenstückeln” in the original, Hänsch 2019: 163) it also “is the continuous process of improvisation – instead of only a moment in the course of time –, to master life. It is an attitude to life itself, that constitute nabâsir and that is based on the specific experience that somehow everything will go well afterall, despite many problems.“ (ibid, translated from German). 22 Motive: (1) “Producing physical or mechanical motion”. And. (2) “Causing or being the reason for something”. (Oxford University Press 2019a). 23 “Generally, “feeling” describes the subjective experience dimension of an affect, whereas “emotion” points to its culturally shaped conceptualization. (SFB 1171 Affective Societies 2016: 5) 24 Reason: (1) “A cause, explanation, or justification for an action or event”. And. (2) “The power of the mind to think, understand, and form judgements logically”. (Oxford University Press 2019c) 25 “Affect, or affectivity, is the dynamic, relational process that brings various actors into relationship with each other. Affections [Affizierungen] tend to occur between actors rather than within them, forming an entanglement of affecting and being-affected in particular setting. … [A]ffectivity is essentially a temporal sequence, not a static, snapshot-like state. Moreover, unlike an emotion, a feeling, or a mood, affectivity is an as of yet indeterminate unfolding of forces, which is experienced primarily in terms of its intensity. Before being directed into culturally or discursively established channels in which they can be acted out in a specific way, affections are not yet measured in terms of their directionality, evaluation, or articulation. This is also why they evade specific forms of reflective representation. With these characteristics, affect can be conceived in some ways as the “central ingredient” of emotions and other individually perceived phenomena. At this, affectivity is neither independent from enculturation and emotion repertoires, nor does it merge with them completely” (SFB 1171 Affective Societies 2016: 3)

[‘ambil saja’ (only/just taking)] the support they need. However, hoping/trusting that the catch will be lucky again if they are patient for a while is what reassures Saldrin and Erma to carry on working as well as Erma’s family to keep taking support and is what causes feelings of basic content [‘sudah senang’ (already happy)].

Thus, it is the common cause of sustaining everyday life that they experience, though in different ways, inevitably together as a unit and that motivates them to act embedded; within ‘the group’ (and) ‘the environment’.

‘Living over the sea’ and what it implies

In one of our conversations, Erma told me: “Banyak orang tinggal diatas laut tapi tidak suka laut.” (Many people live over the sea, but they don’t like the sea.). And indeed, during the time I lived in Boe Manes, I got the impression that the way people feel about the sea is manifold, not only among different people but also within the same persons. So why do they not like ‘the sea’? What they do ‘not like’ is not so much ‘the sea’ (as a body of water) but aspects of their lives that they find difficult and that they are unhappy with. The sea, as the quote indicates, is where they live. Even if the village is partially located on the island, about half the houses are built over the sea and while the road on the island is being used to walk between houses, the sea is used to paddle between houses, which is about as common as it is to walk and is represented by the houses which almost all have a door accessing the island and one accessing the sea. As the sea is omnipresent, it is not so much resentment of the sea as a subject but rather of the status quo. For example, I did not find anybody who wanted to move to a place inland. What they all wanted, however, was more money and security while only some wanted jobs other than fishing. Although, obviously, financial and health security and a choice of occupational field are central aspects in life, I still had the impression that the desire for more money and different jobs were informed by ideas and impressions from ‘outside’. Sadly, for some, to ‘live over the sea’ is a symbol of backwardness and poorness despite the pride many articulated for being Sama at the same time. While it is true that people live a simple life if material possessions, medical care and career opportunities are parameters, there are many qualities to be found that are lacking in ‘the West’ and that I tried to make people aware of, like the strong support, the non-egoistic thinking, the beauty of the place and the comparably little surveillance by and dependency on the state and international trade. While they do not have much hierarchical

63 resource to bargain prices, they yet have relatively free access to resources from the sea and islands concerning food and materials. This, however, may decline in the coming years because of the growing roles of the national park and tourism. The negative self-image and assessment that some – not all – have of their way of living probably derives from the historically distorted reflection from political powers on ‘sea nomads’ during colonialization and Indonesian nation-building programmes as well as from impressions of ‘the West’ that they have received from TV shows and tourists. While the literature concerning the processes of (political) marginalisation is relatively little on Sama/Bajo/Bajau (see Lowe 2003; Gaynor 2005; Nolde 2014), several works on Orang Laut/Orang Suku Laut deal rather detailed with the development from “favoured royal subjects” in pre-colonial Malay world over people seen as “pirates” suppressed by European colonialists (Chou 2010: 41) to “less refined people” during postcolonial Indonesian modernisation and islamization programmes (ibid: 101) as well as more recent issues, for example, territorial conflicts in the context of international economic explorations of the maritime spaces (Chou 1997, 2006, 2010; Lenhart 1995, 1997, 2001, 2008). Before my research, with these texts in mind, I expected that they would see themselves as mistreated by the government, however, when I talked to people about the ongoing elections, they seemed rather content and some even told me that they were, also ethnically, well represented26. The contrast concerning the evaluation of ‘living over the sea’ varied stronger among families than among generations. While there are old people who have always lived a sedentary lifestyle like, for example, Ana’s mother, there are middle-aged people who lived on a boat as a child, like Saldrin. Consequently, the biographies are not necessarily more similar among age groups than they are among families. Furthermore, the works people do vary stronger among

26 Concerning territorial rights, the national park in the region and its questionable work with coral could possibly become a problem in the next few years. At the time of my research, the national park was not very present and many people were not critical of it, however, Saldrin told me that he and several of the more ‘traditional’ Sama fear huge problems with it in the future. In one occasion, I could follow one of the national park’s projects in which they chopped off coral to build bio-rocks. I know the concept of bio-rocks from my work as a dive instructor. Normally, they are built from already broken-off coral to keep them alive. In this case, heathy coral was taken forcefully and transported to other places. It may be that I do not know enough about it and got a wrong impression, but my concern is that, in this case, the purpose was not to conserve coral but to generate money in tourism by taking coral to tourist areas for representation and thereby destroying the fishing grounds of the local people. If I am right, it is especially disgusting as the national park paid Sama for attaching the coral to the lattices without them knowing that their staff was chopping off coral instead of collecting broken-off pieces. I only found out accidentally as I wanted to ‘help’ underwater. Yet again, the national park employees seemed proud of their work and did not try to hide it. Therefore, I do not know if even they were being tricked or if I do not know enough about it. Either way, it would be interesting to deal with this issue more and to follow the developments from a territorial rights perspective.

64 families than among generations. While collecting freshwater concerns basically everyone in almost the same way and, like the village (Boe Manes), the ‘sweet water’ (boe manes) brings people together (spatially and socially), the ways people obtain food and make money connect some families and separate others (concerning work activities and attitudes to change). Living in these two rather different families helped me to observe these dissimilarities that were visible, for example, in the availability of food or the opinion on concrete houses. Yet, also the ‘salty water’ (boe aseng), can mean the same for different families as well as different things for the same person.

Starting with similarities:

For once, everybody is connected through the ocean with family and friends in other villages which means that the social connections across the sea are important to every person and family in Boe Manes. Furthermore, in one way or another, everybody depends on the sea for food and/or money and trade, whether one is involved in fishing, trading or in providing services as they all depend on the exchange processes. Therefore, though not to the same amount, everybody is affected by winds that make it impossible to go further out sea. This also includes high school students who visit schools in other villages. Then, as the sea is not only ‘out there’ but also literally under them, high tides and storms put a threat to everybody’s life in Boe Manes. Reversely, to relax and socialize, people like to sit on their stilt terraces and the sea around and under those is where children play. Furthermore, the wider sea is where adults can find some quiet time in the otherwise extremely busy and loud village. Nur and Saldrin, despite their differences, both enjoyed the time they travelled and did not like to stay inside the village for too long and Erma and Ana both liked to travel with them, especially for trade trips to other villages. In contrast, ‘living over the sea’ can also be dangerous and when strong storms appear sooner than expected, the family members waiting in the village watch into the distance in concern. Then again, there are times where fishing is extremely unproductive and people do not know how to provide for their families.

Moving on to different things it can mean for the same persons:

Taking Nur as an example, the connections he has across the sea are, on the one hand, sources of economic income and expense and, on the other hand, of good and bad news as he keeps in touch with the members of his family living across Sulawesi through travel and cell phone reception. This also shows that different parts of the sea have different

meanings, which becomes especially clear when looking at children. While the sea underneath and in front of their houses is a playground for the young ones, the waters within sight but outside of Boe Manes is where older children are allowed to go without adults and where they go to help to catch some fish for dinner, while the reef and the longer distanced travel is where they are afraid of as big fish could be behind the rocks and eat them. Taking Saldrin as another example, the reef (as only a part of the sea), to him, is a space of economic chance and duty that can be dangerous but also a space of comfort and escape. The paradox here is that going to the reef to work once or twice a day for several hours is both pressure and relief.

Accordingly, it can be dangerous as well as safe, exhausting as well as relaxing, scary as well as exciting or comforting and so on, depending on (1) which part of the sea (e.g. in the village, at the reef, at the deeper sea, on the way across the sea), (2) which time (e.g. day, night, heat, thunderstorm, wind, rain), (3) which activity (e.g. fishing overwater/underwater, trade, play, travel) and (4) which context (e.g. economic/social, worry/pressure, celebrations, leisure/fun, escape). ‘Living over the sea’, therefore, means a lot of things. The most congruent aspect of it is probably unpredictability and, then again, mudah-mudahan. Mudah-mudahan or the ability to wait, to take things as they are and the will to help is vital to ‘living over the sea’. It can be linked to the changing availability of fish and freshwater and is a motive that guides effectively through good and difficult times. Nevertheless, the coming into play of new goods and connections can turn this strength into a strain as I have shown. In the case of the concrete houses, the money given is not sufficient to build a whole house but as one has to use it for that purpose, it consequently forces people into building concrete houses which is not necessarily their own interest and makes them less flexible in a physical and economic way. However, even if this support is seen critically, as it is by Saldrin, it cannot simply be declined as this would be misinterpreted by others as a statement that support is generally not needed or wanted and have consequences for the family’s role in the village that exceed the building of houses. Furthermore, the money that is meant for school fees does not come regularly and does not consider the changing times in Boe Manes. For example, if money is really short, buying rice is more important than paying school fees and the money will be used accordingly or, if own needs are not pressing, instead of saving the cash, it is giving to those who are currently struggling or have bigger investments to make. For example, Erma gave the money she had received to pay school feels to Fi, so Fi could carry on in building her house. However, Fi decided to buy a gas cooker for Erma with that money, as Erma had had

66 problems with her lungs from cooking with wood in her indoor kitchen. As official statements need to be made about the property of each household in written to obtain the money for school fees and these statements can be checked unannounced, this could potentially cause problems as the officials do not think in the same units as, for example, Erma and Fi do. Also, while charity money is taken naturally and without scepticism of further consequences, payment for services people offer in the role of employees are not demanded, like when Saldrin did official security and enumerating work during the elections. Furthermore, fish is sold without demanding a fair price even if money is urgently needed as this could only be done together. This shows that the stabilizing function mudah-mudahan and the implicit concepts of patience, luck and support have in the context of ‘living over the sea’ can be problematic when they meet with other concepts concerning material aspects and also in terms of misinterpretations as the quote by Lenhart summarizing outside views on the views on Orang Laut shows. This proves, on the one hand, that the work of anthropologists and basic research outside of cities is relevant as the insight knowledge can be used for mutual comprehension or as legal evidence in the case of political struggles, for example, ‘land’ rights, with the ethnographer as “expert witness” (Hopper 1990). Vice versa, the ways that people have found to live with unpredictability and a limited direct influenceability of things can also be used as a model orientation in Western societies or cities when circumstances change and the everyday has to be learned anew, like in natural disasters – or, as of April 2020, hinting at coronavirus: It can be helpful to accept that not everything in life is by choice and to recognize flexibility, patience and support instead of self-orientation and fast individual careers as actions and ability to carry on when planning is possible only to a limited extend. On the other hand, this also proves that the ways people organize, think and feel living over the sea also apply to matters that have no direct connection to the sea as a space, resource or landscape – or ”seascape” (Chou 2016) for that matter.

‘Orang Sama bersama-sama’

To summarize, the hopeful anticipation of the future, which comprises of trust but also worries and negative feelings, and the inherent socio-culturally established guidelines to wait, to deal with things the way they happen and to support, is what motivates and moves people in manifold ways through good and difficult times. Also, although experienced differently, this process is rather constituting a group that ‘sits in the same boat’ together than individuals that find their own ‘seats within that boat’ or relate to ‘other boats’. Although, obviously, different

67 groups exist and form anew continuously, these processes are mainly inward-directed, working towards a shared purpose, instead of against or in relation to each other, as I have shown by the example of my complications to travel to mainland Sulawesi, while in cases of conflict, people are rather withholding. The wordplay: “Orang Sama bersama-sama” meaning ‘Sama people together’ but also pointing at their sameness (Sama for the ethnic group, bersama-sama for ‘being/doing together’, and sama for ‘same’), is another hint towards that and got especially clear in an interview I conducted with an elderly woman, Ha, and her daughter, Ni, who is a shop-owner in her thirties:

Me: “Dan disini, orang melakukan semua And here, people do all activities aktivitas bersama, iya? Di Jerman tidak together, right? In Germany, it is not sama. Munkgin sekarang saya sudah the same. Maybe now, I’ve already sedikit terbiasa, sudah dua setengah gotten used to it a bit, already been bulan disini. Tapi sebelumnya, saya here two and a half months. But belum terbiasa melakukan semua before, I was not yet used to do all aktivitas bersama; kalau jalan-jalan ada activities together; taking a walk, orang yang ikut, kalau duduk ada orang people join, sitting down, people yang ikut.” join.

Ha: “Kan orang bilang, orang Bajo ini, kan They say, Bajo people are the orang sama/Sama, jadi, keluar bersama- same/Sama people, so go together, sama kan?” right?

Me: “Itu kenapa namanya Sama?” This is why the name is Sama?

Ni: “Itu dibilang Sama karena Bajo, dia It is called Sama because Bajo, selalu bersama. Dia kemana akan he/she is always together. Wherever bersama; ke tempat duduk, kumpul he/she will be/go, he/she will always bersama. Jadi, dinamakan Sama.” be/go together; to the sitting place, gather together. So, the name is Sama.

Me: “Tidak bagus sendirian?” Alone/individually is not good?

Ha: “Tidak bagus sendiri!” (quick and Alone is not good! loudly)

Ni: “Tidak bagus!” It’s not good!

Me: “Kenapa?” Why?

Ha: “Takut.” Scared.

(Interview excerpt, 28/04/2019)

This is not to say that they are not aware of themselves as persons or have no individual experiences and wishes. However, they are also aware that they cannot exist alone and, accordingly, do not place the centre of attention in themselves or start thinking from a singular person but from groups as smallest units.

It is interesting to mention here a process I observed concerning Ana:

During the time I lived with her, she spent a lot of time inside the house. When she was not cooking, washing or collecting water, she often slept. I did not have the impression that she minded the work, but I felt like she was not happy and somewhat lonely, maybe bored. As I have explained, it is a lot more common among men to go fishing but it is not unusual for women. Although Ana knew how to dive and fish with nylon and net, it was nothing she did in her everyday life anymore. Therefore, the reasons for her staying at home were not the same as Chou describes. Yet, it had a similar effect:

Now women are discouraged from fishing and scorned when they do. They are also discouraged from taking pride in their fishing skills. This has broken up what used to be efficient family production units. … The result is that throughout the day, some just stay in their newly given houses, doing nothing and not even leave their homes at night but have taken to the bottle. (2010: 103)

She did not drink but often laid on the floor by herself. After I had moved, however, she started to go fishing on a daily basis together with Nur. I know they had not only paused doing this when I lived with them because the few times we went fishing, they told me how long they had not been fishing and after they had started to go a lot, people in Boe Manes were talking amusedly about how they did it to impress me and ‘attract’ me back into their house. However, what happened was that Ana became a lot happier. She smiled and laughed much more. She integrated herself into the village more, which I could tell by the frequency and the places she went to after she had gone fishing again for a few weeks, and she moved with ease when before she appeared slightly depressed to me. Maybe this can be traced back to the loss of her twelve-year-old son four years prior to my stay. She told me that, for this reason, she did not want any more children. With her

oldest daughter living in mainland Sulawesi for higher education and her younger daughter about to move there too, she appeared somewhat detached, lost and afraid of being even lonelier with no children living in the house soon. When, however, she was with children, like when she brought me to move in with Erma and Saldrin and played a bit with the children in the house before she left, I had the impression that she enjoyed this moment immensely while, at the same time, she was sad knowing this was only a moment. After she had started to catch fish on a daily basis, however, and consequently was more mobile within and beyond the village again, e.g. to sell fish, I had the impression that she re-embarked the communal experience of life and did not feel lonely and detached anymore.

This shows the fusing entanglement of place (sea, village), practice (fishing, trade) and people (socializing) and its reassuring effect.

Conclusion

In chapter one, I have shown how the most common and time-consuming occupations in their practice, entangle people (within and beyond family relations), places (within and beyond the village site) and time (day/night/weather) and that this concurrence of people, places and time through practice expresses a routinized flexible movement over the sea. This routine, however, as shown in chapter two, is shaken by current transformations concerning concrete houses and money. While concrete houses and money both have a settling function in the sense of a spatial and an economic fix, in the local context they have rather destabilizing and displacing than stabilizing and emplacing effects As explained in chapter three, this has to be linked to the strong emphasis on togetherness: With the background of living on boats and the inevitably togetherly experienced movement and ‘exposure’ to difficult and good times, people think rather group-centred than self-centred and are inseparably part of a mutuality in different ways. Looking deeper into this mutuality, as I have done in chapter four, one finds the notion of mudah-mudahan, which can be assigned to patience, luck and support and which, as an underlying, differently experienced guiding motive, flexibly moves people in their ‘life over the sea’.

Following many aspects of everyday life, I hope to have shown that the living practices, evaluations, meanings and the ways they continuously are (re)shaped and shaped newly are too complex and too entangled to grasp the ocean as either an economic zone, as was done when maritime anthropology as a sub-discipline evolved in the context of a growing world population and increasing globalisation, or as an ecological zone of either multiple (ecological/subject- focussing) ontologies or in terms of vulnerability and resilience, as is often done in more recent works in connection with maritime degradation and climate change. Furthermore, I hope to have shown that the sea is also where it does not appear physically. While I agree with Schneider who states that:

The problem is merely that Euro-American researches coming from a different tradition of perceiving the sea fail to see in it what indigenous people see: distinct bodies of waters of different qualities, paths and boundaries. (2012: 195), 27

I think that it is also a problem if researchers only look for the sea as bodies of water or to approach the sea as a (dialectic) process between people and environments. While I do not generally question human-environmental-relation approaches, I think they are mainly suitable if environments change rapidly – here anthropologists need to reflect upon the fact that conducting research means radical environmental change for them but not necessarily for the people they research – and when difference is experienced, e.g. for disaster28, war, displacement, migration, commute29, travel or some kinds of sports, and for societies that make a (strong) conceptual split between people, place and time: When moving is understood from a sedentary point of view as movement between different places (meaning there are conceptual borders or in- and outsides, whether spatially or temporally), rather than a mobile motion of view with no conceptualized ends or exits. It is for this different comprehension, as I have explained in the introduction, that nomadic/mobile groups of people have had severe difficulties to legally claim their land/sea30. Consequently, I do not simply mean to tackle the nature- culture-dichotomy:

To conceptualize a division between ‘nature’ and ‘cultural’ in the water world of the Orang Suku Laut would be unfortunate. This is because of the assumption that there exists the separation of the naturally real from the culturally constructed. Such a dichotomy needs to be questioned if we are to comprehend people’s own perceptions of the world. This essay is starting from the premise that ways of acting in the environment are also ways of perceiving it, and demonstrates that such a division does not exist for the Orang Suku Laut. (Chou 2016: 269),

27 See Sather 1997 chapter 3 for an in-depth differentiation of a “World of Sea and Islands” as comprehended by Bajau comprising of differentiated topographies; directions; winds; currents; depths and colours; star, lunar and monsoon cycles; fishing zones and grounds; (spiritual) meanings and names. 28 In a research I conducted in Christchurch, New Zealand, about how people “get used to a new normal” after having experienced a destructive earthquake, but more importantly, experiencing thousands of earthquakes on a daily basis in the years that followed while living in a city so broken that it did not only mean material and often job loss but also a loss of physical, social and emotional orientation within people’s once familiar neighbourhoods, the concept of human-environmental-relation was beneficial to approach how people processed this “big learning-curve”. 29 In a research I conducted about the motivations of voluntary lifesavers at a river in Berlin, the experienced freedom associated with the change in environment between a restrictive, loud and busy city-life during the week and a quiet weekend in ‘nature’ without rules was one of the main reasons. 30 See Gilbert 2007, 2014; Brighenti 2010 and Mazzullo 2013 for accounts on nomadic people’s struggle to claim their land as well as other struggles they have had in the context of international law based on (Western) sedentary and nation-state-affiliated ways of living and thinking.

72 but: When mobility and practical/occupational/economical/social/emotional entanglements ‘with the environment’ are so routinely and continuously inherent in everyday life as is the case in Boe Manes, a relational thinking between people and environment is not beneficial, as relations, despite hinting at connecting processes, also hint at differentiating and subject- forming processes:

Organic life, as I envisage it, is active rather than reactive, the creative unfolding of an entire field of relations within which beings emerge and take on the particular forms they do, each in relation to the others. Life, in this view, is not the realisation of pre-specified forms but the very process wherein forms are generated and held in place. Every being, as it is caught up in the process and carries it forward, arises as a singular centre of awareness and agency: an enfoldment, at some particular nexus within it, of the generative potential that is life itself. (Ingold 2000: 19)

Therefore, rather than co-existence, as I have argued, mutual consistence needs to be focussed. Similarly, Chou, who beside the perception of water also looks at giving birth and naming among Orang Suku Laut when she approaches the Southeast Asian seascape, comes to the conclusion that:

[T]he more one looks, the more one can see into it. At its most intense, all boundaries between self and other, as well as persons and objects, completely disappear. It is at this point that one discovers the real meaning of water in Southeast Asia. (ibid.: 281)

Likewise, the metaphor “dry paddle – empty pot“ is not only to be understood literarily or momentarily. Like food is existential to life and exceeds its materiality and nourishing function as being bound in practice and representing support and diverse mutuality in Boe Manes, the sea does too. It is omnipresent in such a way that it cannot just be framed as a resource, a space or a perceived environment. Neither is it sufficient to grasp water in its totality (Orlove & Caton 2010), as substance and symbol (Helmreich 2011) or as waterworlds with water as emerging “fluid object in more senses than one” (Hastrup & Hastrup 2016: 20) as these approaches still objectify water and sea. Instead, I think, it is advisable to grasp the omnipresent, but sometimes hidden inherence of water, or the seas, as socio-cultural spheres by taking a broader focus that also looks beyond water. Comprehending this way also dissolves the dualism that human-environmental-relation approaches fail to overcome. In their defence, however, writing in English requires the use of subject-object-relations – a problem that I was also faced with.

What I have tried to say in short:

The sea/life, in Boe Manes, is experienced similarly as well as differently by different persons and it is experienced differently by the same persons in different instances of its expanse. This may not be surprising. However, the crux is that it can only be (fearlessly) experienced/lived together, as the centre of experience does not lie in individual persons (or at the link of a person’s brain and their environment, see Ingold’s drawing on the ecology of mind following Bateson, 2000: 18), but in the dynamics essential to ensure the consistency of a group (a drawing, therefore, would not display a person at its centre but a mutual purpose that is experienced differently, yet only together, and, in that, blurs together rather than to ‘form singular centres in relation’ (see Ingold 2000: 19 on previous page), and, therefore, is not drawable). Only together, motivated by the notion of mudah- mudahan, it makes/means the socio-cultural sphere meaning/making people’s life across person, place and time as a multifaceted but same unit that continuously evolves and (re)shapes as an open complex (see figure 85-87).

To look for similarities and differences in ‘other’ maritime socio-cultural spheres, considering the entanglements of person, place and time and through which practices and shared motives they are consisting – or relating? – and evolving, could be of high interest for further anthropological research. Especially Polynesia, where, too, the ocean and mobility are inherent in ‘culture’ in (colonial) historic, practical, economic, political, social, artistic and spiritual ways as is beautifully captured by the famous words of Teresia Teaiwa:

We sweat and cry salt water, so we know that the ocean is really in our blood. (as quoted by her colleague Hau’ofa 2008b: 41.), but which in contrast to Indonesia, where orientations towards ‘modernity’ predominate, has been, sometimes under the label of ‘cultural renaissance’, reorienting towards cultural heritage (see Ka’ili 2005 for cultural practices and socio-spatial-relations; Case 2019 for indigenous belonging and resistance; both indigenous Pacific scholars) could be an interesting regional focus for anthropological comparison regarding ‘meaning-making ocean’ in a time where ‘culture’ is widely suspended from anthropology but lived by people.

Although, obviously, I had to break down and organize my findings and certainly have missed a whole lot of things and also did not have space to address everything I observed31, I still think that taking a rather broad focus and, despite the limits of participant observation, taking the time to live with people, is important as a lot can be overseen when anthropologists return to the comfort and privacy of their own beds and kitchens after observing ‘the relevant’ and focusing on ‘engaging’ and ‘applying’ knowledge more than on ‘simply’ understanding –

Not being able to ‘escape’ from the new life experience despite exhaustion and hunger and the personal bond that evolves through sharing shelter and food:

It is believed that a special bond is established between people who have slept and eaten in the same place. (Chou 2010: 32; see also von Poser 2013 for sharing food, which in Boe Manes predominantly means to hold oneself back eating together rather than to give food to each other),

I believe, allows for understanding on a different level compared to occasional field visits. Also, I consider the ‘breaks’ between the more articulated activities and the ‘collapse’ in protocol when no visitors are around (meaning one needs to obtain the role of a staying family member rather than that of a visiting researcher) especially insightful.

With all the habitual foci in today’s anthropology, I believe, the discipline should not lose its interest in, its appreciation of and its fascination for being human per se. Also, with these foci often being on crisis, conflict, devastation and rapid transformations, we should not forget to consider the continuous establishing and mastering of ‘ordinary’ everyday life, which probably is more meaningful to and characteristic of our existence than the more ‘exceptional’ battles. If, however, we are taught to focus on ‘relevant’ topics to make our research ‘ethically legitimate’ and ‘useful’, we are discouraged from looking beyond what we can imagine. In my opinion, this is at the risk of epistemological bias. Anthropology, then, becomes the study of unknown details within more or less predetermined and isolated topics, rather than the emic study of people and society that identifies connections and comprehends conceptual horizons.

31 Besides the things that remained obscure to me, I did not find the space to write more about e.g. garbage disposal, which helped me understand about group-centred as well as spatial-temporal-integral thinking and mudah-mudahan but, as I realized in discussions, would have, at the cost of my points, taken over as a global ecological issue. Nonetheless, the different conceptions should urgently be considered by law makers to reduce Western dominance in international (environmental) law.

Photo gallery

Figure 1: Hill view of the village

Figure 2: Village road (vv)

Figure 3: Common buildings inside the island Figure 4: Family houses at the edge of the island

Figure 5: Children playing inside the village Figure 6: Construction connecting island and sea

Figure 7: Rain falling through stilt house into sea Figure 8: People travelling in the distance

Figure 9: Ana and Nur's concrete house

Figure 10: Ana and Nur's terrace in front of their island- Figure 11: Erma's parent's terrace, seaward-part of stilt based house house (vv)

Figure 12: Erma and Saldrin's wooden stilt house

Figure 13: Saldrin and Erma getting ready to travel to W. Figure 14: On a trade trip with Nur, live-fish inside the to sell lobster, Elo and Devi watching from house body of the boat (underneath planks)

Figure 15: Nur's fish tank in front of his house Figure 16: Nur's fish tank, underwater

Figure 17: Nur applying iodine into wounds Figure 18: Live-fish trade-platform

Figure 19: Pearl farm, underwater Figure 20: Men collecting shell-farming racks

Figure 21: Women cleaning shell-farming racks Figure 22: Searching kima with Ana

Figure 24: Cooked kima

Figure 23: Preparing kima with Ana in front of her house; basket with rope to collect seawater

Figure 25: Saldrin pulling his boat, searching for octopus Figure 26: Saldrin teasing octopus out of its hiding place

Figure 27: Octopus fighting back with ink Figure 28: Saldrin bringing octopus to surface

Figure 29: Saldrin killing octopus for transport Figure 30: Clouds and waves, time to return to Boe Manes

Figure 31: Underwater searching by Figure 32: Saldrin smiling on the way to the reef night, catch stored on boat, which Saldrin pulls behind him

Figure 33: Erma’s mother fishing with nylon (pv) Figure 34: Nur preparing the fishing line for night fishing

Figure 35: Erma grilling fish on the boat by night Figure 36: Ikan garam drying in the sun (pv)

Figure 37: Saldrin’s father putting net into water Figure 38: Net forming a circle

Figure 39: Making noise to tease fish within the circling net Figure 40: Erma’s cousin and her father pulling-in net into the net on their attempt to escape

Figure 42: Woman returning from net fishing (pv) Figure 41: Brother of Saldrin reorganizing net underwater while the others pull It up

Figure 43: Boiling water (pv) Figure 44: Woman making chilli paste

Figure 45: Cooking special part of kima Figure 46: Cumi-cumi cooked in its ink

Figure 47: Devi cooking rice (pv) Figure 48: Good catch (pv)

Figure 49: Snack Figure 50: Teripang drying in the sun (pv)

Figure 51: Women cooking rice for big celebration Figure 52: Women preparing vegetables for big celebration

Figure 53: Woman travelling to Figure 54: Children playing and collecting rain water neighbouring island to collect water

Figure 55: Buckets placed halfway underneath the roof to Figure 56: Hill on neighbouring island that needs to be collect rain water efficiently walked up to collect water when it has not rained

Figure 57: Tempat air beside Erma and Saldrin's house (pv) Figure 58: Woman collecting water

Figure 59: Erma organizing water, which is stored Figure 60: Women socializing at the tempat air (pv) separately for drinking, cooking and cleaning (pv)

Figure 61: Su washing laundry at the tempat air in rain; man returning to Figure 62: Toilet over the sea his home after collecting water

Figure 63: Girl playing in front of the house on a boat (pv) Figure 64: Children playing in front of the house in the water (pv)

Figure 65: Children playing in front of the house Figure 66: Boy playing underneath the house, underwater underwater (pv) (pv)

Figure 67: Children and I on a little boat trip Figure 68: Children and I returning from little boat trip

Figure 69: Bedroom in Nur and Ana’s house Figure 70: Livingroom in Saldrin and Erma’s house

Figure 71: One of about 20 new concrete houses Figure 72: Chopped off hill, rocks used for houses

Figure 73: Fi’s wooden stilt house under construction (pv) Figure 74: Structure of an abandoned stilt house on a reef

Figure 75: Saldrin's (only and small) boat Figure 76: Big traditional boat of a tourist; Sama used to own a big and a small boat for different tasks

Figure 77: Devi and Erma’s mother waiting (pv) Figure 78: Saldrin and Erma's mother and brother waiting (pv)

Figure 79: Teaching English, children working together Figure 80: Playing volleyball in the late afternoon

Figure 81: Children playing memory Figure 82: Award ceremony

Figure 83: Bed of Erma, Saldrin and their children, pillows Figure 84: Erma and some of her family (pv) stacked together (pv)

Figure 85: Fish Nur and his brothers caught after their mother’s funeral

Figure 86: Preparing fish for gunting rambut celebration (a baby’s first head shave/aqiqa)

Figure 87: Erma's youngest sister during fishing with her parents (pv)

Glossary

Ada There is/are Air Water Akan Will (verb) Aktivitas activity Ambil To take Aseng Salty Bagus Good Bahasa Language Bantu To help Banyak A lot, much, many Belum Not yet Berbeda Different Bersama Together, with (adjective) Bersama-sama Together (verb, adverb) Beruntung Lucky Besar Big Bilang To say Boe Water Boe aseng ‘Salty water’ [seawater], the sea Boe manes ‘Sweet water’ [freshwater], village name Buang To throw away Budaya Culture Bulan Month Busai Paddle Cari To search Cumi-cumi Squid Dan And (Tahun) depan Next (year) Desa Village Di In, at

Dia He/she Diatas Over/above Dibilang Called Dinamakan (To be) named Disana There Disini Here Dua Two Duduk To sit Garam Salt Gunting To cut Gurita Octopus Harus Must, have to Ikan Fish Ikan garam Salted fish Ikut To come along, join Ini This Jadi So, thus Jalan-jalan To walk around Jangan Don’t Jerman Germany, German Kalau If, when Kami We, us, our (exclusive) Kan Right?/emphasis Karena Because Ke To (direction) Keluar To go out Keluarga Family Kelupang Life Kemana Where (to) Kenapa Why Kepala Head Kepala Desa ‘Village head’ [mayor] Kima Hippopus (specific shell) Kita We, us, our (inclusive)

Kosong Empty Kumpul To get together Lari Run (off) Lupa To forget, lose Makan To eat Mancing To catch fish Mandi To bath Manes Sweet Marah Angry Mati Dead Melakukan To do Mudah-mudahan Hopefully Mungkin Maybe Naik To come up Namanya Its name Nanti Later Net, jaring Net Nilon Nylon Orang Person, people Pakai Using/with Pakai nilon With Nylon [hand-line-fishing] Papan Wood Pario Pot Pasti Definitely Pikir To think Rambut Hair Ref (location), batu karang (materiality) Coral reef Rumah House Saja Only/just Sakit Sick Sakit kepala Headache Sama Same; name of ethnic group Satu One Saya I, me, mine

Sebelumnya Before that Sedikit A little Sekarang Now Selalu Always, constantly, invariably Semua all Senang Happy Sendiri(an) Alone Seperti Like Setengah Half Sudah Already Suka To like Suku Tribe Sulit Difficult Tahu To know Tahun Year Takut Scared Tapi But Tempat Place Terbiasa To get used to Teripang Sea cucumber Terus Continue, through Tidak Not Tidak usah There is no need to Tidur To sleep Tinggal To live Toho Dry Tunggu, menunggu To wait Udang Shrimp Warung Shop Yang That, which, who

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